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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
VIGNETTES 

Third Series 



EIGHTEENTH 

CENTURY 

VIGNETTES 



THIRD SERIES 



BY 

AUSTIN DOBSON 

M 



For detail, detail, most I care 
(Ce superfiu, si n^cessaire ! ) 






NEW YORK: DODD, MEAD 
AND COMPANY .... 1896 



s} ^ - 



""'> 






Copyright, 1896, 
By Dodd^ Mead and Company. 

All rights reserved. 



John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.SiA. 




TO 

R. F. SKETCHLEY. 

My dear Sketchley, 

This Book is dedicated to you for two 
reasons. One is, that f wish to thank you for 
much friendly encouragement and patient criti- 
cism : the other, that j desire in this way to 
record my gratitude to that excellent institu- 
tion over which you so long presided, and 
where I have spent so many pleasant hours 
— the Dyce and Forster Library at South 
Kensington. 

Sincerely yours, 

Austin Dobson, /" 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



T ITTLE can be said with regard to this 

third series of ' Vignettes ' which has 

not been said with regard to its predecessors. 

As before, the papers treat exclusively of 

* Eighteenth Century ' themes ; as before, 
they are — with one exception — reprinted from 
periodicals. The exception is the essay on 

* Matthew Prior,' which appeared in the 

* Parchment Library,' and is here included by 
permission of Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trench, 
Triibner and Co. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Prologue xiii 

*ExiT Roscius' I 

Dr. Mead's Library , 29 

Grosley's 'Londres' , 51 

'Polly Honeycombe' 83 

Thos. Gent, Printer 104 

The Adventures of Five Days 133 

A Rival of Reynolds 147 

Fielding's Library 163 

'Cambridge, the Everything' 178 

The Officina Arbuteana , . 205 

Matthew Prior 222 

Puckle's 'Club' 269 

Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey 292 

The Tour of Covent Garden 323 

Index 347 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



-♦- 



PAGE 

Garrick as Abel D rugger . . . . . Frontispiece 

Richard Mead To face 29 

Addison 51 

Thomas Gent 104 

Hogarth • 133 

Henry Fielding 163 

Richard Owen Cambridge 178 

Thomas Gray .......*..-.. 205 

Matthew Prior 222 

James Puckle 269 

Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey 292 

Charles Lamb 323 



AN EPISTLE TO A FRIEND. 
(by way of prologue.) 

'Versate . . . 
Quid valeant humeri.' 

TTOW shall a Writer change his ways ? 
"■' ^ Read his Reviewer's blame, not praise. 
In blame, as Boileau said of old, 
The truth is shadowed, if not told. 

* * * * * « 

There I Let that row of stars extend 
To hide the faults I mean to mend. 
Why should the Public need to know 
The standard that I fall below ? — 
Or learn to search for that defect 
My Critic bids me to correct ? 
No: in this case the Worldly- Wise 
Keep their own counsel — and revise. 

Yet something of my Point of View 
I may confide, my Friend, to You. 
I don't pretend to paint the vast 
And complex picture of the Past ; 



xiv An Epistle to a Friend. 

Not mine the wars of humankind, 
*The furious troops in battle join'd; '^ 
Not mine the march, the counter-march, 
The trumpets, the triumphal arch. 
For detail, detail, most I care 
(Ce superflu, si necessaire 1) ; 
I cultivate a private bent 
For episode, for incident; 
I take a page of Some One's life. 
His quarrel with his friend, his wife, 
His good or evil hap at Court, 
' His habit as he lived,' his sport. 
The books he read, the trees he planted, 
The dinners that he eat — or wanted : 
As much, in short, as one may hope 
To cover with a microscope. 

I don't taboo a touch of scandal, 
If Gray or Walpole hold the candle ; 
Nor do I use a lofty tone 
Where faults are weaknesses alone. 

In studies of Life's sordid side 

I own I take no special pride ; 

The stocks, the pressgang, and the gibbets 

Are not among my prize exhibits ; 

^Addison's Campaign. 



An Epistle to a Friend, xv 

Why should I labour to outdo 

What Fielding wrote, or Hogarth drew? 

Yet much I love to arabesque 
What Gautier christened a 'Grotesque'; 
To take his oddities and ' lunes,' 
And drape them neatly with festoons, 
Until, at length, I chance to get 
The thing I designate Wignette.' 

To sum the matter then : — My aim 

Is modest. This is all I claim : 

To paint a part and not the whole, 

The trappings rather than the soul. 

The Evolution of the Time, 

The silent Forces fighting Crime, 

The Fetishes that fail, and pass, 

The struggle between Class and Class, 

The Wealth still adding land to lands, 

The Crown that falls, the Faith that stands . . . 

All this I leave to abler hands. 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY VIGNETTES. 



'EXIT ROSCIUS.' 

n^OWARD the latter end of the year 1775, 
-*■ those of * Farmer George's' London lieges 
who had exhausted their interest in the impend- 
ing trials of Her scandalous Grace of Kingston 
and that * beauteous sufferer ' (and suspected 
forger), Mrs. Margaret Caroline Rudd, must — 
if they had escaped the prevalent influenza ^ — 
have found an equally absorbing occupation in 
discussing the respective merits of the Covent 
Garden and Drury Lane playhouses. At Covent 
Garden, then under the elder Colman, Mr. 
Sheridan, Jun., who, rather less than a year 
earlier, had opened his brilliant dramatic career 
with the comedy of ' The Rivals,' was drawing 
crowded audiences to the bright little opera of 
* The Duenna,' his very singable songs in 

^ * The influenza has raged in most parts of this king- 
dom as well as in London ' (* Morning Chronicle,' Novem- 
ber 29, 1775). 



2 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

which were effectively aided by the admirable 
settings of his father-in-law, Mr. Linley. On 
the other hand, at Drury Lane, Garrick had not 
only revived the Jacobean comedy of ' Eastward 
Hoe ' under the title of ' Old City Manners,' 
his adapter being the accomplished Mrs. Char- 
lotte Lenox, but, calling in the aid of the brothers 
Adam, of Adelphi memory, he had beautified and 
Italianized his theatre, making it more commo- 
dious inside, and embellishing it externally — 
toward Brydges Street — with a brand new col- 
onnade, balcony, and pediment, the last being 
surmounted with a classic trophy, flanked at the 
angles — in place of the familiar figures of Thalia 
and Melpomene — by a lion and a unicorn. 
Concerning all these attractive novelties, to judge 
from the letters in the papers, the quidnuncs of 
1775 must have been abundantly exercised. 
* Covent Garden ' writes sneeringly to her sister 
' Drury Lane ' on her ' late acquisition of a new 
gown and petticoat ' ; and ' Drury Lane ' retorts 
in a similar spirit of feline amenity. ' Impartial,' 
commending the improved accommodation, 
nevertheless holds that, ' with all deference to 

the taste of Messrs. A m, . . . there is 

wanting a simplex munditus (sic) in the orna- 
ments to render them truly elegant,' while an- 
other correspondent sarcastically suggests that 



* Exit Roscius.' 3 

quite enough has been said upon this purely 
subordinate topic of decoration. But ' Adel- 
phos ' (whose pseudonym suggests an advocate 
either of the architects or the manager) is of 
opinion that ' Mr. Garrick, with a spirit undi- 
minished by age, has . . . made it [his theatre] 
the prettiest Assembly-room in the whole Town.' 
The same writer, besides, regards it as incon- 
ceivable that although he [Mr. G.] * himself per- 
forms his best parts three or four times a week ' 
(an assertion which of course was promptly con- 
tradicted), all the world should flock ungrate- 
fully to that ' new sing-song thing,' ' The 
Duenna ' ; and the public are significantly re- 
minded that their Roscius is no longer young, 
and cannot possibly be expected to last forever. 
' In a few years, perhaps months,' says ' Adel- 
phos,' with tears in his voice, ' this bright lumi- 
nary of the stage must yield to the common lott 
of mortality 1 Let us suspend our love of Operas 
till that melancholy period ! ' ' 

The date of this letter, with its note of por- 
tent, is November 27, and before Christmas had 
come Garrick was actively arranging the step 
which, with more or less sincerity, he had so 
long been threatening to take — his definite and 
final retirement. For this, various reasons have 
been assigned, but it is probable that no single 



4 Eighteenth Century l^ignettes. 

cause can be made responsible for a course which 
must have been dictated by many considerations. 
In the first place, exceptional as were still his 
energy and his vivacity, he was no longer the 
Garrick who four-and-thirty years before, inaug- 
urating a new era in the art of acting, had 
bounded on the boards at Goodman's Fields. 
He was close upon sixty ; and already, in addi- 
tion to the wear and tear of an unusually harass- 
ing profession, he had to contend with two 
especially eighteenth-century ailments — gout 
and stone. His old partner. Lacy, had very 
recently died, and the managerial cares which 
this loss augmented were not made more easy 
to endure by the contentious character of Lacy's 
son and successor, Willoughby. His three 
leading ladies, Mrs. Yates, Miss Younge, and 
Mrs. Abington, gifted and indispensable no 
doubt as they were, nevertheless taxed all his 
tireless diplomacy to keep them in good humour 
with himself and with each other — Mrs. Abing- 
ton, in particular, being especially ' aggravating.' 
' What with their airs^ indispositions, tails, fringes^ 
and a thousand whimsies besides,' he is made to 
say in the ' Morning Chronicle ' for December 
i6, ' a manager leads the life of a devil, and he 
declared his intention of speedily relinquishing 
that thankless vocation. The sentiment thus 



'Exit Roscius.' 5 

expressed found its echo in more than one con- 
temporary epigram.^ At the same time, it may 
be assumed that when he redecorated his theatre 
he had not contemplated any very immediate 
severance from the scene of his ancient suc- 
cesses. The popularity of ' The Duenna,' the 
consciousness of his own failing powers and re- 
laxing rule, and the development of the graver 
of his two disorders, seem, nevertheless, to have 
precipitated a decision which, in spite of all col- 
lateral anxieties, he might — after the traditional 
fashion of his kind — have continued to post- 
pone ; and at the close of December he wrote 
in express terms to offer the refusal of his share 
in Drury Lane to Colman. The offer was 
promptly declined. The Covent Garden man- 
ager, who would probably have bought the 
whole, refused to purchase a part. He would 
not for worlds, he protested, sit on the throne 

^ As, for example, this, quoted in Davies' ' Life,' 1780, 
vol. ii, p. 325 : 

• The Manager's Distress. 

* I have no nerves, says Y g ; I cannot act. 

I 've lost my limbs, cries A n ; 't is fact. 

Y s screams, I 've lost my voice, my throat 's so sore. 

Garrick declares he '11 play the fool no more. 

Without nerves, limbs, and voice, no shew, that 's certain : 

Here, prompter, ring the bell, and drop the curtain,' 



6 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

of Brentford with an assessor, unless (he was 
careful to add) that assessor could be Garrick 
himself. Such being the state of the case, it be- 
came necessary to seek for other bidders. Ul- 
timately Sheridan, his father-in-law, and two 
others found the money required, — some 
;£3 5,000, — and Garrick prepared to make sur- 
render of his stewardship. 

With the minor details of his last months of 
management — enlivened and diversified as they 
were by fresh vagaries on the part of Mrs. 
Abington — these pages are not so much con- 
cerned as with the series of farewell perform- 
ances which preceded his departure from the 
stage. Before the end of January the purchase 
of the share appears to have been completed, and 
Garrick's sincerest friends were congratulating 
him on his approaching emancipation. In par- 
ticular, from his old antagonist and warm-hearted 
admirer, Mrs. Olive, already herself in retire- 
ment at Twickenham, came a most cordial and 
characteristic epistle, containing an opportune 
testimony to that part of his talent with which 
the public were least acquainted — to wit, the 
extraordinary patience and administrative skill 
with which, behind all the triumphs of the house, 
he had presided as wire-puller in chief. Other 
correspondents were as demonstrative in their 



'Exit Roscius.' 7 

felicitations. By-and-by the ' Gentleman's Mag- 
azine ' announced the sale as an accomplished 
fact, and not long afterwards the sequence of 
leave-takings began. Strictly speaking, the first 
of these valedictory representations was Gar- 
rick's assumption, on February 7, of the part of 
Sir Anthony Branville in Mrs. Sheridan's re- 
cently revived comedy of ' The Discovery.' 
The old beau, who 'emits' volcanic language 
with the ardour of an iceberg, was not one of 
the actor's great characters, but even here spec- 
tators like the younger Colman remembered 
how adroitly, to fit a fantastic personality, Gar- 
rick contrived to quench the lustre of his won- 
derful eyes so as to reduce those orbs to the 
semblance of 'coddled gooseberries.' Upon 
this occasion Mrs. Abington took the part of 
Lady Flutter. After ' The Discovery ' he played 
four times during the ensuing month in four differ- 
ent pieces. Then, for March 7, was announced 
what proved to be his final appearance in the 
last of these, ' Zara,' — an adaptation by Aaron 
Hill from Voltaire — in which, with Miss 
Younge as the heroine, he took the part of 
Lusignan, the old King of Jerusalem. It was 
a favourite rdle ; and long after, one of those 
who saw him act it at this very dale, communi- 
cated to Christopher North — over the signature 



8 Eighteenth Century Fignettes. 

of 'Senex' — his still green recollections of that 
memorable night. They are too lengthy and too 
discursive to quote, but they afford a vivid idea 
of the rapt attention with which Garrick's entry, 
not made till the third act, was greeted by the 
hushed and expectant house. The impression 
produced upon this witness was that of some- 
thing entirely new, unprecedented, unexpected 
in matters dramatic. To him it seemed that all 
his pre-conceived ideas of acting were wrong — 
that Garrick was not acting, but that he was 
Lusignan — that ^ by a kind of magic . . . the 
old king was conjured from his grave, and ex- 
hibited to the spectators in proprid persond, as 
just liberated from the long confinement of his 
dungeon — first unable to distinguish objects in 
the light, after such a length of gloomy incarcer- 
ation, and afterwards gradually recovering the 
power of vision.' The illusion thus created was 
enhanced by that admirable elocution ' which 
compelled you to believe that what he [Garrick] 
spoke was not a conned lesson, but suggested 
by the exigency of the moment, and the imme- 
diate dictate of his own mind.' ^ The same night 

1 Miss Burney (in * Evelina,' Letter x.) is much to the 
same effect : * I could hardly believe he had studied a 
written part, for every word seemed to be uttered from 
the impulse of the moment.' 



* Exit Roscius.' 9 

witnessed the production of a farce by Colman 
called 'The Spleen; or, Islington Spa.' Its 
merit was not extraordinary, though it was acted 
for fourteen or fifteen nights ; but its ' Pro- 
logue,' said to have been inimitably spoken by 
King in the part of the bookseller Jack Rubrick, 
is notable as containing the first public an- 
nouncement of Garrick's intention to leave the 
stage. After describing a tradesman who quits 
his business for the fallacious delights of a coun- 
try seat at Islington, King went on : 

* The master of this shop too seeks repose, 
Sells off his stock-in-trade, his verse and prose, 
His daggers, buskins, thunder, lightning, and old clothes- 
Will he in rural shades find ease and quiet ? 
Oh no ! — 
He '11 sigh for Drury, and seek peace in riot.' ^ 

For more than a month after the above-men- 
tioned representation of ' Zara ' Garrick's name 

^ Rubrick, who also sells quack medicines, recalls 
Johnson's 'Jack Whirler' ('Idler,' No. 19), and still 
more, Johnson's original, ' John Newbery ' (see ' An Old 
London Bookseller ' in ' Eighteenth Century Vignettes,' 
1892, pp. 125-135). It may be added that, according to 
the 'Morning Chronicle' for March 8, 1776, *a very 
beautiful scene of Loutherbourg's painting, representing 
the Spaw Fields with the Pantheon, and the adjoining 
buildings, was introduced in the second Act' of this 
farce. 



lo Eighteenth Century Fignettes. 

is absent from the bills, which are mainly occu- 
pied by the benefits of other members of the 
company. On April ii, however, he played, 
for the last time, one of those low-comedy parts 
in which, even more than another, he gave evi- 
dence, not only of that versatility which had so 
astonished Count OrlofF, but also of that power 
of confining himself rigorously within the limits 
of his impersonation, which is held to be one of 
his greatest gifts. This was the part of Abel 
Drugger in the ' Alchemist.' It was sometimes 
debated while he lived whether in this character 
he was really more successful than his contem- 
porary Weston, and it is known that he himself 
greatly admired Weston's acting of Drugger. 
But the consensus of opinion among the best- 
instructed critics of the day is that Weston, 
while investing the rdle with much individual 
humour, never attained to that complete absorp- 
tion of its essence which, in Garrick's case, 
compelled the commendations of onlookers as 
diverse as Hogarth and Hannah More. ' You 
are in your element,' said Hogarth in a burst of 
blunt admiration, after seeing his old friend in 
Drugger and Richard the Third, ^ when you are 
begrimed with dirt, or up to your elbows in 
blood.' But no one has written more graphi- 
cally or acutely of this ' quite unique creation ' 



'Exit Roscius.* n 

(as he calls it) than Hogarth's own best comment- 
ator, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, who was in 
London at the close of 1775. After dwelling 
upon its extension of the author's conception, 
and the minute by-play and subtle facial variation 
by which that extended conception was inter- 
preted and made intelligible to every being in 
the theatre, Lichtenberg goes on to give an 
illustration of what he regards as Garrick's 
specific superiority to Weston. The passage is 
so excellent an example of his keen insight (he 
only once saw Garrick as Drugger) that it de- 
serves unmutilated quotation, the admirable 
rendering being that of the late Lord Lytton. 
' I will only mention,' says Lichtenberg, ' by 
way of example, a single trait, which Weston is 
quite incapable of imitating, and still more in- 
capable of inventing. When the astrologers 
spell out the name of Abel Drugger in the stars, 
the poor gull says, with a certain self-satisfaction, 
*' That is my name.''' Now, Garrick gives to 
this satisfaction the quality of s^cr^f self-homage. 
He makes you at once understand that, at this 
moment, there is in the depths of Abel's con- 
fused sensations, a vague inarticulate sentiment 
that any open expression of self-satisfaction 
would be wanting in respect to the majesty of 
the stars. He turns softly aside from the as- 



12 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

trologers, and, for a minute or two, you see him 
silently caressing and enjoying this new sensa- 
tion, till the rapture of it gradually flushes the 
wrinkling circles round his eyes, and at last 
overflows his whole countenance, as he half 
whispers to himself, " That is my name.'' The 
effect, upon all who behold it, of this uncon- 
scious betrayal of secret self-congratulation, is 
quite indescribable. You at once recognize in 
Abel Drugger, not only the passive stupidity of 
a born fool, but the active absurdity of a fool 
who is beginning to reason his way to a ridicu- 
lously high opinion of himself.' 

That the words spoken by Drugger are not 
Ben Jonson's, but an addition to the prompt- 
book by some later hand, detracts nothing from 
the merits of this vivid piece of descriptive 
finesse. However they originated, Garrick cer- 
tainly justified their retention in the acting copy 
of the play. A fortnight later, on Thursday, 
April 25, he bade farewell to another of 'rare 
Ben's ' characters — that of Kitely, the jealous 
city merchant of ' Every Man in his Humour.' 
Beyond the verdict of Walpole — not an enthu- 
siastic or even a sympathetic critic of Garrick — 
to the effect that this ranked with Ranger in 
* The Suspicious Husband ' as one of his capital 
performances (a praise which Walpole did not 



* Exit Roscius.* 13 

vouchsafe to his Lear), little record seems to 
have been preserved respecting his appearance 
as Kitely, which is not mentioned by ' Senex ' 
above quoted, while Hannah More, who was 
present on this very occasion, confines herself to 
recording the fact. In regard to his next ' last 
night ' (April 30) — as Sir John Brute in ' The 
Provoked Wife ' — there are better data, since, 
for the profit of posterity, Lichtenberg was lucky 
enough to see him in this part also. As, in the 
case of Abel Drugger, he had contrasted Garrick 
with Weston, so, in speaking of Vanbrugh's 
blackguard baronet, he contrasts Garrick with 
Quin. The most interesting passage of his notes, 
however, turns upon Garrick's unrivalled facial 
power. ' I was close to the stage,' he says, 
* and could observe him narrowly. He entered 
with the corners of his mouth so turned down 
as to give to his whole countenance the expres- 
sion of habitual sottishness and debauchery. 
And this artificial form of the mouth he retained 
unaltered from the beginning to the end of the 
play ; with the exception only, that, as the play 
went on, the lips gaped and hung more and 
more in proportion to the gradually increasing 
drunkenness of the character he represented. 
This made-up face was not produced by stage 
paint, but solely by muscular contraction ; and 



14 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

it must be so identified by Garrick with his idea 
of Sir John Brute as to be spontaneously assumed 
by him whenever he plays that part ; otherwise, 
his retention of such a mask, without ever once 
dropping it either from fatigue or surprise, even 
in the most boisterous action of his part, would 
be quite inexplicable.' After this, one can under- 
stand what Johnson meant by telling Miss Burney 
that Garrick might well look much older than he 
was, ' for his face had had double the business 
of any other man's.' 

There were, however, graver reasons why he 
should seem older. He was really ill, and 
nothing but his invincible energy could have 
kept him going. ' Gout, stone, and sore throat 1 
yet I am in spirits,' he had written in February 
to a friend. Added to this came the nervous ten- 
sion of these farewell representations, increased 
and intensified by the feverish enthusiasm of his 
hearers. ' I thought the audience were cracked,' 
he said of the reception of Abel Drugger, ' and 
they almost turned my brain.' Yet no sooner 
had he bidden good-bye to Sir John Brute than 
he followed up that part by three more succes- 
sively, all for the last time, and all in comedy. 
On May 2 he played Leon in his own version 
of Beaumont and Fletcher's ' Rule a Wife and 
Have a Wife'; on the 7th, Archer in ^The 



* Exit Rosctus.' 15 

Beaux' Stratagem ' ; and on the 9th, Benedick 
in ' Much Ado about Nothing/ The leading 
feminine part on each occasion was taken by 
Mrs. Abington — 'The Stratagem,' as it was 
called familiarly, being selected for her benefit 
(when she also acted in ' The Man of Quality,' 
an adaptation from Vanbrugh's ' Relapse '). 
Garrick was supreme in all of the three charac- 
ters named. Nothing — according to those con- 
temporaries who were privileged to see them — 
could be better than the gay vivacity of his Bene- 
dick ; nothing exceed the splendid gallantry, 
the manly dignity of his Leon. But it was in 
the laced hat and brilliant light blue and silver 
livery of Farquhar's gentleman-footman that — 
notwithstanding the sneer of Johnson — he must 
have out-topped the record.^ * Never,' it was 
said, ' had appeared so genteel a footman, or so 
complete a gentleman : the one fit to triumph 
over the pert airs of an inn-keeper's fair daughter 
[Cherry] ; the other inspired with that happy 
impudence, so timely corrected by a most pro- 
found respect, as not to be resisted by the finest 
woman in the world [Mrs. Sullen], languishing 

1 Johnson thought that, in Archer, the gentleman 
should have broken through the footman ; but Garrick — 
perhaps naturally — was of opinion that his old friend 
could not distinguish the one from the other. 



1 6 Eighteenth Century Fignettes, 

under the neglect of a cruel husband.' To the 
unmixed enjoyment of this ' last time,' there was 
only one irremediable drawback — the absence 
of that unrivalled Scrub, Thomas Weston, who 
had died in the preceding January, and whose 
part was taken by Yates. 

By this time Garrick had bid adieu to no 
fewer than eight of his most popular parts. Out 
of these — with the exception of Kitely, which 
can scarcely be classed as comic — only that of 
Lusignan belongs in strictness to the domain of 
Tragedy. The farewells of Lear, of Richard, 
of Hamlet, were yet to come. From a letter in 
his correspondence which seems to have been 
misdated, he must also, at some period, have 
thought of adding Macbeth to the list. ' I shall 
play Lear,' he writes, ' next week, and Macbeth 
(perhaps) in the old dresses, with new scenes, 
the week after that, and then * exit Roscius.'' 
But whatever he may have originally intended, 
' Hamlet ' was advertised for May 30, and, ac- 
cording to the notice in the public prints, certain 
omissions were to be made. To these he had 
referred in the letter quoted above. ' I have 
ventured to produce *' Hamlet" with alterations. 
It was the most imprudent thing I ever did in all 
my life ; but I had sworn I would not leave the 
stage till I had rescued that noble play from all 



* Exit Roscius' 17 

the rubbish of the fifth act. I have brought it 
forth without the Grave-digger's trick and the 
fencing match.' He goes on to say that the 
course he had taken had been ' received with 
general approbation, beyond my most warm ex- 
pectations.' These changes, to which Lichten- 
berg asserts that Garrick should never have lent 
himself, and which must be laid at the door of 
Voltaire and French influence, had, however, 
no longer life than the actor ; and the public, 
according to Davies, soon clamoured for their 
'Hamlet' 'as it had been acted from time im- 
memorial.' Of Garrick's assumption of this part 
at this period, perhaps the most important record 
is that of Hannah More, who, nevertheless, did 
not see him on this particular occasion, but on 
a penultimate performance in April, just after 
he had played Kitely for the last time. She sat 
in the pit, close to the orchestra, with the two 
Burkes, Sheridan, and Warton for neighbours. 
As a stage critic she is naturally not to be com- 
pared with those already mentioned, but her 
words give the note of enthusiasm which ani- 
mated the majority of those who (if they were 
fortunate enough to gain admittance) were now 
crowding Old Drury from all parts of the country 
whenever Garrick's name was in the bills. ' I 
staid in town to see "Hamlet,"' writes this 

2 



1 8 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

perfervid chronicler, ' and I will venture to say, 
that it was such an entertainment as will prob- 
ably never again be exhibited to an admiring 
world. . . . The requisites for '' Hamlet " are 
not only various but opposed. In him [Garrick] 
they are all united, ard as it were concentrated. 
. . . To the most eloquent expression of the 
eye,^ to the hand-writing of the passions on his 
features, to a sensibility which tears to pieces 
the hearts of his auditors, to powers so unpar- 
alleled, he adds a judgment of the most exquisite 
accuracy, the fruit of long experience and close 
observation, by which he preserves every gra- 
dation and transition of the passions, keeping all 
under the controul of a just dependence and 
natural consistency. So naturally, indeed, do 
the ideas of the poet seem to mix with his own, 
that he seemed himself to be engaged in a suc- 
cession of affecting situations, not giving utter- 
ance to a speech, but to the instantaneous ex- 
pression of his feelings, delivered in the most 
affecting tones of voice, and with gestures that 
belong only to nature. ... A few nights before 
I saw him in Abel Drugger; and had I not seen 
him in both, I should have thought it as possible 

1 She always insisted to the last — as Macaulay, who 
had heard her, remembered — upon its ' unequalled radi- 
ance and penetration ' (Trevelyan's * Life/ ch. iii.). 



' Exit Roscius.' 19 

for Milton to have written '* Hudibras," and 
Butler '^ Paradise Lost," as for one man to 
have played Hamlet and Drugger with such 
excellence.' 

From a letter following the one from which 
these extracts are derived, it seems that Mrs. 
Garrick petitioned Miss More for a copy of this 
little ' criticism,' and it is quite possible that 
' dear Nine ' — as Roscius playfully called her — 
was not entirely unmindful that her words might 
eventually come under his notice. Her rather 
rhetorical account may be supplemented by that 
of another witness (in all probability) of this 
same April performance. This was Joseph 
Farington, the landscape painter and Royal 
academician, for whose impressions we are in- 
debted to those gossipping volumes, ' The Recol- 
lections of John Taylor,' proclaimed on his title- 
page to be author of the farce of ' Monsieur 
Tonson.' Farington told Taylor that he went 
to see ' Hamlet ' acted by Garrick in his last 
season. Until the entrance of the prince with 
the royal court in Scene 2, he paid little atten- 
tion to the play ; and then, observing the actor's 
worn and painted face, his bulky form, and the 
high-heeled shoes he had too palpably adopted 
to increase his height, concluded that Garrick 
was going to expose himself by attempting to 



20 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

perform a part for which age had rendered him 
unfit. But at length he began to speak, and 
such was ' the truth, simplicity and feeling ' 
which he displayed, that Farington speedily lost 
sight of everything but the Hamlet which 
Shakespeare had conceived. 

To the advertisement of the last ' Hamlet' is 
appended, — 'On Saturday [i. e., June i] Mr. 
Garrick will perform a principal Part in Com- 
edy.' This was the part of Ranger in ' The 
Suspicious Husband,' which was accordingly 
played on the date named. It is a rdle which 
ranks with such lighter characters as those of 
Archer and Benedick, and we have the assur- 
ance of Mrs. Siddons, that it was one of Gar- 
rick's ' most delightful ' impersonations — a 
verdict in which even Walpole would have 
agreed. After this, on Monday, June 3, came 
what had been intended to be the last perform- 
ance of ' Richard the Third.' It was, however, 
repeated on Wednesday, June 5, ' by Command 
of their Majesties,' being followed (also by com- 
mand) by Garrick's farce of ' Bon Ton.' This 
second performance must have been a cruel 
ordeal for Garrick, upon whose physical powers 
the part of ' crook'd-backed Richard,' as he was 
described in the bills, made inexorable demands 
— demands with which his increased infirmities 



'Exit Roscius' 21 

made it more and more difficult to comply. ' I 
dread the fight,' he told his friend Cradock, 
' and the fall. I am afterwards in agonies.' 
Yet he surprised the King by the extraordinary 
activity with which he ran about the field. His 
Lady Anne, upon these two occasions, was 
Mrs. Siddons, then young and (as always) 
beautiful, but not yet risen to the maturity of 
her powers, and only imperfectly known to the 
London playgoer. Years afterwards she told 
John Taylor that she still retained the most vivid 
recollection of Garrick's terrible energy in this 
part, and in that of Lear. She remembered par- 
ticularly how, in rehearsing Lady Anne, he 
begged her, * as he drew her from the couch 
[? ' corse,' in Act i., sc. 2], to follow him step 
by step, for otherwise he should be obliged to 
turn his face from the audience, and he acted 
much with his features.' She promised to at- 
tend to his wishes, but the intensity of his play 
entirely overcame her, and she was constrained 
to pause, ' when he gave her such a look of 
reprehension as she never could recollect with- 
out terror.' 

Mrs. Siddons appears to have acted only six 
times with Garrick — thrice as Mrs. Strickland 
in ' The Suspicious Husband,' and thrice as 
Lady Anne in * Richard the Third' — the last 



2 2 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

performance of the latter piece being also the 
last occasion they ever appeared together. On 
the next day (Thursday, June 6), the ' Public 
Advertiser announced that Garrick would play 
Lear on the following Saturday, ' being the last 
Time but one of his appearing on the Stage.' 
As to the supreme excellence of this impersona- 
tion, which duly took place on the 8th, there 
seems to be no question. Cumberland protested 
that it was one of the three finest pieces of act- 
ing he had ever witnessed, the other two being 
Henderson's Falstaff and Cook's lago ; and 
Reynolds told Hannah More (who of course 
was rapturous) that it took him ' full three days 
before he got the better of it.' Years after the 
occurrence, Bannister related to Rogers how 
Garrick had thrilled him by his utterance of the 
words, 'O fool, I shall go mad!' in Act H. 
O'Keeffe, again, could recall the exquisite ten- 
derness and pathos with which, in Act IV., 
wistfully asking, 'Be your tears wet?' he 
touched the cheek of Cordelia ; while the tra- 
ditions are unanimous as to the effect of the 
terrible paternal curse of Act I., under the in- 
fluence of which the very audience seemed to 
shrink and shudder. One of the most eloquent 
of the written tributes which Garrick received 
at this time came in the form of a farewell letter 



^ Exit Roscius.' 23 

from the beautiful Madame Necker — the some- 
time love of Gibbon — then on a visit to Eng- 
land. ' Je ne s^ais, Monsieur,' she wrote on 
May 14, ' oii je trouverai des termes pour rendre 
Teffrayante impression que vous nous avez faite 
hier ; vous vous 6tes rendu mattre de notre ^me 
toute entiere, vous I'avez bouleversee, vous 
I'avez remplie de terreur et de piti^, je ne puis 
penser encore aux differentes expressions de 
votre physionomie sans que mes yeux se remplis- 
sent de larmes. Quelle superbe et touchante 
le^on vous nous avez donn^e I quelle horreur 
pour I'ingratitude I quel amour I quel respect 
pour la vieillesse 1 m^me injuste, m^me egar^e ; 
oh ! que n'ai-je encore les auteurs de ma vie, 
que ne puis-je porter k leurs pieds tous les sen- 
timents que vous avez eleves dans mon coeur, et 
y r^pandre les larmes d^chirantes que vous 
m'avez fait verser. Toute ma pensee se con- 
centre sur les divers caracteres de la vieillesse 
affligee ; je fuis et je cherche cette image, et 
jamais rien ne s'est grave plus profondement 
dans mon souvenir.' 

Garrick v^^as justly gratified by this impassioned 
homage, and he showed his pleasure in his reply. 
But his farewells were not without their pangs 
of separation. When, on this same occasion, 
he got back to the greenroom, he said with a 



24 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

touch of sadness to his Cordelia (Miss Younge) 
that he should never again figure as her father. 
The actress fell upon her knees, and begged him 
at least to give her a father's benediction. Rais- 
ing her kindly, he laid his hand upon her head, 
and then murmuring to those who had crowded 
round, * God bless you all ! ' hurriedly quitted 
the room. Miss Younge (afterwards Mrs. 
Pope), who often told the story, could seldom 
repeat it without tears. 

But the ineluctabile tempus was at hand, and 
on Monday, June lo, 1776, came what, in 
modern theatrical parlance, would be ' positively 
the last appearance.' That Garrick would have 
chosen some important character on this occa- 
sion might perhaps have been expected. The 
renewed representation of Richard, however, 
and the demands made upon his strength in 
Lear, taken in connection with the sufficiently 
pathetic aspects of this abandonment of his pro- 
fession, decided him to make his farewell bow 
in a less arduous part. He chose Don Felix in 
* The Wonder ' of Mrs. Centlivre — an imper- 
sonation having certain affinities with that of 
Jonson's Kitely. From floor to ceiling the 
theatre was crowded by admirers of all ranks, 
and of almost all nationalities. The proceedings 
opened with a prologue (memorable for the line 



* Exit Roscms.' 25 

* A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind') 
in aid of the Theatrical Fund. This, to which 
the profits of the night were to be devoted, had 
been set on foot by himself. Then came the 
piece. ' Never,' says the ^Morning Post,' 

* were the passions of love — jealousy, rage, 
&c., so highly coloured, or admirably set off: 
in short, he finished his comic course with as 
high a theatrical climax as he did on Saturday 
evening, his tragic one.'-^ Replying to the 
already quoted letter of Madame Necker, he 
himself supplies some account of his feelings. 
'Though I performed my part,' he says, 'with 
as much, if not more spirit than I ever did, yet 
when I came to take the last farewell, I not only 
lost almost the use of my voice, but of my limbs 
too : it was indeed, as I said, a most awful 
moment.' He here refers to the brief and un- 
affected address which he gave at the close. 
There was no attempt at an epilogue ; ' the 
jingle of rhyme, and the language of fiction,' he 
told his audience, would be unsuited to the oc- 
casion. In a few faltering and almost conven- 

1 He presented the buckles he wore in this last part to 
Hannah More, as a relic. They prompted an extempore 
couplet from Mrs. Barbauld : 

* Thy buckles, O Garrick, thy friend may now use, 
But no mortal hereafter shall tread in thy shoes.' 



26 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

tional words, which were interrupted by a burst 
of genuine tears, he confined himself to assuring 
them of the sincerity of his past efforts on their 
behalf, and of his unalterable gratitude for their 
long kindness to himself. The Country Dance 
customary at the end of Act V. had been already 
omitted ; and it was now felt by spectators and 
performers alike that Dibdin's ' Musical Enter- 
tainment ' of ' The Waterman ' which was in- 
tended to follow ' The Wonder,' and in which 
Bannister was to play his popular part of Tom 
Tug, could not take place. And so — accom- 
panied by the uncontrolled sobbings of Mrs. 
Garrick in her box — the curtain came down 
upon the excited plaudits and farewells of one 
of the most brilliant and enthusiastic audiences 
which had ever filled that historic house. 

Five-and-forty years after this event, and not 
many months before her own death, Mrs. Gar- 
rick, at that time an old lady of more than ninety- 
eight, and interested to the last in any relics of 
her ' Davy,' visited the British Museum at the 
invitation of Mr. J. T. Smith, Keeper of the 
Prints and Drawings, to inspect Dr. Burney's 
collection of Garrick portraits. Inquirers to- 
day may still study, in the Print Room at Blooms- 
bury, the identical engravings and sketches which 



* Exit Roscius.' 27 

the great actor's widow saw in August, 1821, and 
re-create from them, if they will, the images 
evoked in her nonagenarian recollections. They 
will see the magnificent Archer and the multi- 
farious Scrub, sitting in much the same attitudes 
as those in which contemporaries have described 
them: — Garrick, airy, elegant, and ddgagi; 
Weston, awestruck and awkward, in red stock- 
ings and a green apron. They will see the 
white-haired Lusignan, in his over-decorated 
dressing-gown,^ taking the little cross from a 
Zara whose architectural costume might have 
been designed by William Kent himself. They 
will see the restless-eyed Kitely of Reynolds ; 
they will see Zoffany's inimitable Abel Drugger, 
leering round with stupid cunning at Face and 
Subtle, while he presses his tobacco into his 
pipe-bowl with his thumb ; they will see Sir 
John Brute, in his woman's hoop and cap, 
viciously cudgelling the watch in Covent Garden, 

^ An interesting anecdote of Garrick's last illness is 
connected with this garment. Two days before his death, 
when Mrs. Garrick, worn out with nursing, was talking 
quietly to an old friend whom she had persuaded to stay 
and dine with her, her husband, in his gorgeous undress, 
and looking as if he were about to play the part of Lu- 
signan once more, suddenly entered the room. He sat 
moodily for an hour without uttering a word, and then 
withdrew as abruptly as he came. 



28 'Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

and wearing upon his deboshed and besotted 
visage the very look that Lichtenberg had noted. 
They will see Lear in his ermine, buffeted by 
the storm ; and Benjamin Wilson's Hamlet in 
his black velvet ; and the rival Richards of Ho- 
garth and Nathaniel Dance — the latter by far 
the finer of the two. Yet with all these aids to 
historic reconstruction, much must still remain 
unrealized. So true are Garrick's own prophetic 
words in the Prologue to * The Clandestine 
Marriage ' : — 

* Nor Pen nor Pencil can the Actor save ; 
The Art, and Artist, share one common Grave ! ' 



DR. MEAD'S LIBRARY. 

TN that lively and now rather rare little book, 
■^ the ' Etatdes Arts en Angleterre/ its author, 
Hogarth's friend the Swiss enameller Rouquet, 
under the heading ' De la Medecine,' draws an 
instructive, if somewhat malicious picture of the 
eighteenth-century leech of eminence. After 
dilating upon his costume, his sword, his ample 
and indispensable perruque noude (' a physician,' 
wrote Fielding in 1732, ' can no more prescribe 
without a full wig, than without a fee'), his 
chariot, his urbanity, and his erudition, Rou- 
quet goes on to note — as a proof of the pro- 
fundity of the Doctor's scientific attainments, 
and of the limited amount still left for him to 
learn — that he has almost invariably a special 
pursuit or hobby outside his own profession. 
* One busies himself with paintings, antiquities, 
or prints ; the next with natural curiosities in 
general, or with particular departments of them ; 
some preserve in bottles all the lusus naturx that 
are discovered or invented ; others devote their 
energies to objects more agreeable, and are 



30 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

galants.' Music, Poetry, the Drama, — each 
of these has its charm for your medical virtuoso. 
' This apparent inattention with which the Eng- 
lish practitioners exercise their calling ' — the 
critic continues ironically — * is sometimes of 
incalculable value to the patient. Nature, it is 
suggested, frequently takes advantage of their 
negligence to exert all her own efforts in effect- 
ing a cure.' The sentiment is one in which it is 
easy to detect the compatriot of the famous 
author of the ' M^decin Malgr^ Lui ' ; but of 
the cultivated tastes of the foremost physicians 
of this country in the first half of the last century 
(Rouquet's book is dated 175 5)j there can be no 
reasonable doubt. Garth and Arbuthnot, for 
instance, the one by ' The Dispensary,' the 
other by 'John Bull,' belong almost as much to 
Literature as to Physic ; and even Sir Richard 
Blackmore, the much abused ' quack Maurus ' 
of Dryden and the wits at Will's, if he cannot 
be advanced as a lettered luminary of the first 
magnitude, may at least be cited as a productive 
case in point. Fat Dr. Cheyne again — Gay's 
' Cheney huge of size ' — was a scholar ; and, 
both before and after his milk regimen, as great 
a humorist as Falstaff ; while Freind and Wood- 
ward were not only writers, but also book- 
lovers, who left behind them extensive collections. 



Dr. Mead's Library. 31 

Dr. RadclifFe, in the capacity of lady-killer so 
liberally assigned to him in the ' Tatler ' and 
elsewhere, should perhaps be classed primarily 
with those whose distractions were amatory 
rather than aesthetic ; but, on the other hand, as 
founder of the great university library which 
bears his name, he certainly rendered essential 
service to students. It is probable, however, 
that Rouquet had in mind chiefly those twin-stars 
in the Hippocratic heaven whom Pope has 
coupled in the line — 

* And Books for Mead, and Butterflies for Sloane* 

Sir Hans Sloane, whom Young dubbed ' the 
foremost toyman of his time,' and whose monu- 
mental urn with its iEsculapian serpents you 
shall still see beside the rail in Chelsea Church- 
yard, was an indefatigable hunter after the bibli- 
ographical treasures and curiosities which after- 
wards went to form the nucleus of the British 
Museum ; while Mead, who died shortly before 
the ' utat des Arts ' appeared, was not only an 
almost typical specimen of the ' great court- 
Galen ' of his epoch, but, during a prolonged 
and prosperous career, had succeeded in bring- 
ing together such a show of antiques, coins, 
and rare volumes as had no contemporary paral- 
lel. The coins and antiques scarcely come 



32 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

within the province of this paper, but the books, 
which in the sale catalogue occupy some two 
hundred and forty pages, may fairly claim brief 
notice. 

Once a collector, always a collector. To 
Richard Mead this venial vice apparently came 
early, for it was during his Wander jahre in Italy 
that he discovered, or rather re-discovered, the 
famous pseudo-Egyptian records then known as 
the Mensaor Tabula Isaica, but now discredited 
as spurious. In the paternal house at Stepney, 
where he first began to practise ; in his houses 
at Crutched- and Austin-Friars ; in the house at 
Bloomsbury where his predecessor Radcliffe had 
entertained Eugene of Savoy, — the ' Biblio- 
theca Meadiana' must have been growing as 
slowly, but as surely, as the fame of Marcellus. 
Its last and longest home, however, was 49 Great 
Ormond Street, at the corner of Powis Place, 
where its owner died. After Mead's death the 
house was tenanted by Lord Grey's uncle, Sir 
Harry Grey. Then, in due course, it was turned 
into a Hospital for Sick Children, and, as that 
institution progressed, ultimately gave way to 
the more imposing building which now absorbs 
not only its site, but also that of the adjoining 
No. 48. Tradition, no less, still speaks of the 
Hospital's first home as an ancient Queen Anne 



Dr. Mead's Library. 33 

Mansion, with fine oak staircases and carved 
chimney-pieces contrasting strangely with the 
rows of tiny cots which, about 1852, began to 
find their places along its dark wainscoted walls. 
Charles Dickens, who, six years later, made 
one of his warm-hearted appeals for funds to aid 
the good work, spoke picturesquely, and from 
personal experience, of the pleasant and airy 
wards into which its time-honoured state draw- 
ing-rooms and family bed-chambers had been 
converted ; and it is to the Children's Hospital 
at Great Ormond Street that, in company with 
the toy-horse, the Noah's ark, the yellow bird, 
and the man in the Guards, he carries — too 
late — the 'little Johnny' of 'Our Mutual 
Friend.' 

The Hospital for Sick Children was still 
domiciled in Mead's 'courtly old house' when 
little Johnny made that last testamentary disposi- 
tion of his effects recorded in the story ; and 
those who now pause before the vast brick and 
terra cotta structure raised by Barry on the spot, 
will find it hard to realise that the earlier dwell- 
ing to which King George H.'s First Physician 
in Ordinary removed in 1720, had, at the back, 
a spacious and secluded garden, and that this 
garden, again, abutted upon the then wide and 
green expanse — not yet encumbered by the 

3 



34 Eighteenth Century Fignettes. 

Foundling — of Red Lion, or Lamb's Conduit, 
Fields. At the end of the garden, about a dozen 
years after taking up his residence at No. 49, 
Mead built a gallery for his overflowing statues 
and antiques, and here no doubt were enshrined 
many of his historical treasures, — the statue of 
Hygeia, afterwards purchased by Askew, — the 
Antinous, for which, notwithstanding its alleged 
broken nose and repaired condition, Lord Rock- 
ingham paid two hundred and thirty pounds, — 
the Homer that Lord Exeter presented to the 
British Museum. It is in this garden-gallery 
that we must conceive its owner discussing 
antiquities with Martin Folkes, or ' curios' with 
Sloane, or Greek particles with Bentley ; here, 
no doubt, he would chaffer with the ' Puffs ' 
and ' Varnishes ' of his day over some newly- 
imported ' black master,' or here, aided by 
Arbuthnot and ' Addison on Medals/ - 

' judiciously define. 



When Pius marks the honorary coin 
Of Caracalla, or of Antonine/ 

Probably only the rarer books — e. g., the 
* Missal,'^ said to be illuminated by Raphael 

1 This, no doubt, was the opinion of Walpole and 
Mead. But later experts regarded the miniatures as six- 
teenth century French work, and described the volume as 
a Book of Hours. 



Dr. Mead's Library. 35 

and his scholars, which afterwards found a home 
at Strawberry Hill — were exhibited in the gal- 
lery ; and it must be assumed that the remainder, 
numbering at their owner's death more than ten 
thousand volumes, were dispersed in the library 
and reception-rooms. What, however, seems 
indisputable is, that Mead was the most acces- 
sible and generous of collectors — not always 
an accessible or a generous race. Neither the 
princely Grolier nor the unparalleled Peiresc^ 
could have made a more unselfish use of his 
possessions. He flung open his treasures freely 
to the public ; he would lend his miniatures and 

1 Grolier's generosity is sufficiently evidenced by his 
well-known book-motto, * lo. Grolierii et Amicorum.' 
But lest the qualifying epithet should be deemed extrava- 
gant in the case of M. Nicolas Claude Fabri de Peiresc, 
let it be recorded, in the words of his biographer, that * he 
sought Books, not for himself alone, but for any that 
stood in need of them ; ' that * he lent an innumerable 
company, which were never restored ; also he gave a 
world away ... of which he could hardly hope ever to 
get the like again; Which he did when learned men had 
occasion to use them.' Finally, if he borrowed books in 
bad condition, he re-clothed them before sending them 
back, *so that having received them, ill-bound and ill- 
favoured, he returned them trim and handsome' {'The 
Mirrour of True Nobility and Gentility,' — being Pierre 
Gassendi's ' Life of Peiresc,' ' Englished by W. Rand, 
Doctor of Physick;' London, 1657, pp. 194, 195). 



36 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

pictures to be copied ; and he not only allowed 
his books to be consulted, but he would even 
permit them to be taken away by deserving 
students. As a host, he kept open house, and 
scarcely any foreigner with the faintest reputa- 
tion for learning visited these shores without 
paying his respects to the renowned physician 
and connoisseur of Great Ormond Street. A 
classical scholar in an age of classical scholars ; 
an omnivorous and indefatigable reader ; a sci- 
entist and an antiquary of distinction ; and with 
all this, a person to whose native amenity his con- 
tinental travels and foreign education had super- 
added a certain cosmopolitan charm of manner 
— he seems to have deserved, better than most, 
the good things that were everywhere reported 
of him. 'Dr. Mead,' said Johnson, 'lived 
more in the broad sunshine of life than almost 
any man.' And Hawkins (whose testimonials 
are seldom unqualified) declares that ' he raised 
the medical character to such a height of dignity 
as was never seen in this or any other country.' 
When, on Saturday, i6 February, 1754? Dr. 
Mead died, to be buried a week later in the 
Temple Church, he was a man of eighty, whose 
work in the world had been done some years 
before. His professional gains had been large: 
in one year, indeed, they are said to have ex- 



Dr. Mead's Library. 37 

ceeded ;^7,ooo. But his tastes and his mode 
of living were on a scale with his means ; and 
as his powers failed and his practice fell off, his 
income dropped also. Towards the close of his 
life, one hears, in Walpole and elsewhere, vague 
rumours of growing embarrassment, and it is not 
impossible that some of his books (in addition 
to the Greek MSS, he sold to Askew) were 
privately disposed of previous to his death. At 
all events, when he did die, there seems to have 
been no question of anything but the sale of his 
library by auction, a step which is the more to 
be regretted in that his collection, instead of 
representing exclusively, like the collections of 
some of his contemporaries, the individual needs 
or likings of its possessor, was really a system- 
atic attempt at a general ingathering of the best 
authors of his day. He aimed at the standard 
and the canonical in everything ; and his library, 
although it did not — as Fielding said — include 
every rare work quoted in the all-embracing 
notes of the ' laborious much read doctor Zachary 
Grey' to ' Hudibras' (for which book, by the 
way. Mead applied the portrait of Butler by 
Gerard Soest), it would, nevertheless, had it 
been preserved intact, have remained an excel- 
lent specimen of a typical eighteenth-century 
library. Its dispersal, however, was not to be 



38 Eighteenth Century yignettes. 

averted. In November, 17^, it was announced 
for sale by Samuel Baker, of York Street, Co- 
vent Garden ; and the auction, beginning on the 
1 8th of that month, continued at intervals for 
twenty-eight nights, terminating on May 8, 
1755. According to Dibdin, the total amount 
realised was;^5,5i8 los. i\d., from which must 
be subtracted £\() 6s. 6d. for bookcases, leaving 
a sum of ;^5,499 45. ^d.'^ 

In these times sales of rare books by auction 
would be copiously chronicled. But in the 
middle of the last century they found scant 
record ; and mention of them, apart from the 
advertisements, is generally confined to private 
letters. Horace Walpole spent five days in 1755 
at the sale of Mead's coins and antiques, when 
he bought, among other things, the reputed 
* Raphael Missal,' of which mention has already 
been made ; but he does not seem to have in- 

^ In a carefully-priced large paper copy of the Cata- 
logue, acquired since these pages were first written, as 
well as in an ordinary copy, the total produce of the sale 
is stated at ^5,1^40 7s. 6d. The half bound ordinary copy, 
it may be added, is clad, as to its sides, in that old hand- 
made Dutch flowered and gilt pattern paper, familiar 
to the collector of John Newbery's children's books, but 
now — as Mr. Charles Welsh found when preparing his 
facsimile reproduction of * Goody Two Shoes ' — no longer 
manufactured. 



Dr. Mead's Library. 39 

vested largely in the earlier sale of books. In- 
deed, his chief reference to these consists in an 
expression to the younger Bentley of heartfelt 
relief that he had not been successful in securing 
the folio 'Prospects of Audley End' (Lord 
Braybrooke's seat in Essex), by Henry Win- 
stanley of the Eddystone, for which he had 
given a commission of two or three guineas, 
whereas it was run up, apparently under some 
misapprehension, to no less than £^0. But 
Dibdin, who possessed one of the half dozen 
large paper catalogues, ' uncut and priced,' men- 
tions a few of the rarer items. Of these there 
were, on vellum, copies of the ' Spira Virgil ' of 
1470 ; of the first Aldine ' Petrarch ' of i^oi ; 
of Melchior Pfintzing's ' Tewrdannckh,' ' pul- 
cherrimis tabulis ab Alberto Durer [Hans 
Schaufflein?] lignoincisisornatum,' 1527 [1^17?]; 
and of Sebastian Brandt's ' Stultifera Navis,' 
1498. Other volumes specified by Dibdin are 
the Abbe d'Olivet's ' Cicero,' 1741-42, 9 vols. 
4to, ' charta maxima, foliis deauratis,' bought by 
Askew for fourteen guineas ; the first edition of 
the ' Historia Naturalis' of Pliny the Elder, 
1469, which found a purchaser in the King of 
France at eleven guineas ; and another edition 
of the same book by Jenson, 1472, with illumin- 
ated initials, which fell, for eighteen guineas, to 



40 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

a bookseller named Willock. This, however, 
must have been but a merely superficial sam- 
pling of Mead's treasures. The number of edi- 
tions of the classics, — of Horace, Virgil, and 
Cicero especially, was extraordinary, and many 
of these were of the utmost interest. ' The 
French books,' says Dibdin again, ' and all the 
books upon the Fine Arts were of the first rarity 
and value, and bound in a sumptuous manner.' 
There were also a large number of MSS. in dif- 
ferent languages, and of books with autograph 
marginalia by Scaliger, Casaubon, Wotton, 
Wren, Hearne, and Mead himself. 

Of some previous book collectors, who were 
also authors, it has been observed that they 
seemed culpably indifferent to what my Lord 
Foppington, in ' The Relapse,' styles ' the natural 
sprauts ' of their own brains. Dr. Mead must 
have been wholly exempt from this infirmity. 
Few, if any of his productions, one would think, 
were absent from his shelves, for the majority 
of them appear in the Catalogue, with all the 
indications of that most favoured treatment which 
are conveyed by luxury of margin, gilt edges, 
and Turkey leather. Mead ' De imperio Soils 
ac Lunse,' 1704; Mead ' De Peste,' 1720 (his 
best book) ; Mead ' De Variolis et Morbillis,' 
1747; Mead, ' Medica Sacra,' 1749; Mead, 



Dr. Mead's Library, 41 

* Monita et Prsecepta Medica,' 175 1 — all these 
occur, not once but often, and in Latin as well 
as in English versions. There are also many 
books which like the ' Medicinal Dictionary' of 
Dr. James were inscribed or presented to him 
' as a man ' (in Warburton's words) ' to whom 
all people that pretend to letters ought to pay 
their tribute ; ' and there are others which owe 
their very existence entirely to his fostering and 
munificent care. One of these last is the works 
of Roger Bacon by Dr. Samuel Jebb, which 
came out in 1733 ; another is the /0//0 edition of 
De Thou's ' Historia sui Temporis ' in seven 
vols., upon which he employed at first Thomas 
Carte, and then Buckley. ' A finer edition of 
a valuable historian,' says Dibdin, ' has never 
seen the light.' He was also, to all appearances, 
a liberal subscriber to large paper copies, which 
abound in the record, and he often took more 
than one. In the case of his friend John Ward's 

* Lives of the Professors of Gresham College,' 
he is down for no less than five. It is possible, 
however, that this particular prodigality was due 
to an adroit compliment supposed to be paid to 
him by the author in one of George Vertue's 
plates. In 1719 Mead had been provoked into 
a duel with a professional rival. Woodward of 
the Fossils, and had proved, by overpowering 



42 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

his antagonist, that his sword was no mere deco- 
rative appendage. Woodward on his part had 
not come off badly, for on being bidden to beg 
for his life, he is alleged to have replied defiantly, 
* Never — until I am your patient ! ' But Wood- 
ward had long been dead when Ward's /o/io was 
published in 1740, and the physical victory, 
which remained with Mead, was supposed to 
be indirectly commemorated at p. 33 by a pair 
of tiny figures in front of the Gate into the 
Stable Yard at Gresham College (said to be the 
scene of the incident), one of whom kneels and 
presents his weapon to the other. 

The natural limits of this paper would be far 
exceeded by any detailed attempt to give an ac- 
count of Mead's ten thousand volumes. As 
might be anticipated, his collection was espe- 
cially rich in medical works of all kinds. Next 
to these come the classics, of which, over and 
above the special rarities already mentioned, 
there is an unusual show of first editions, includ- 
ing, of course, the Homer of Demetrius Chal- 
condylas. Theology, Topography, Archaeology, 
History, Law, Voyages, and Travels are all 
abundantly represented. Nor are Belles Lettres 
neglected, except, it may be, in the item of 
Fiction, of which, as regards England at least, 
the solitary specimen is ' Tom Jones.' But there 



Dr. Mead's Library. 43 

are all the 'Ana' fromScaligerto Poggio; there 
are all the Essayists in large paper from the 
' Tatler' to the ' Craftsman,' including even the 
vamped-up volumes of ' Original and Genuine 
Letters sent to the Tatler and Spectator,' which 
Charles Lillie, the perfumer, issued in 1725. 
There are early editions of Froissart and Mons- 
trelet, and of Montaigne ; there is the extremely 
rare little ' Pens^es de M. Pascal' of 1670; 
there is Perrault's ' Les Hommes Illustres,' 
1696-1700,^ there is an ' Eikon Basilike ' of 
1649; a Surrey's ' Songes and Sonnets ' of 1585. 
Of Shakespeare we can only trace a second 
folio ; but there is a Skelton of 1562, a ' Faerie 
Queene ' of 1 596, a ' Colin Clout 's come home 
again ' of 1 595 ; there are Earle's ' Microcosmo- 
graphy,' and Coryat's ' Crudities,' and Maunde- 
vile's ' Travels' ; there is Raleigh's ' History of 
the World ' ; there is Guicciardini, whose long 
drawn War of Pisa the hapless convict in Ma- 
caulay found even more unbearable than the 

1 In which, let us hope, Dr. Mead had duly noted 
M. Perrault's judicious reprehension of Moliere : 'Iln'a 
pu trop mal-traitter les Charlatans & les ignorants Mede- 
cins, mais il devoit en demeurer Ik, & ne pas tourner en 
ridicule les bons Medecins, que I'Ecriture mesme nous 
enjoint d'honorer' (vol. i., p. 80). The Mead copy sold 
for £2 5j., which was cheap, especially if it contained the 
suppressed portraits of Arnauld and Pascal. 



44 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

galleys ; ^ there is Sanchoniathon, who almost 
inevitably suggests in his train the ' Manetho, 
Berosus, and Ocellus Lucanus,' with whose 
sonorous names, at Welbridge Fair, the in- 
genious Mr. Ephraim Jenkinson cajoled the 
ingenuous Dr. Primrose. 

After so much gravity, the last items have 
perhaps an undue air of flippancy. But they 
serve to remind us in closing, as do not a few 
titles in Mr. Baker's list, of those books which, 
unread to-day, save by the antiquary or biblio- 
grapher, nevertheless survive vaguely in the 
memory by their association with other books. 
Here, for instance, at p. 122, is Capt. George 
Shelvocke's ' Voyage round the World by the 
Way of the Great South Sea,' etc., London, 
1726, 8vo. Who now reads Shelvocke ? Yet, 
according to Bishop Wordsworth's 'Memoirs' 
of his uncle (185 1, i. 107), out of Shelvocke's 
pages, between ' the streights of le Mair,' and 
the coast of Chili, flew that historical ' disconso- 
late black Albitross,^ which plays so essential a 

^ Guicciardini's circumstantial prolixity must have been 
a common jest. Boccalini makes the reading of him the 
punishment of a copious Spartan [perhaps this is the origin 
of Macaulay's anecdote] ; and Steele quotes Donne as 
saying (' Sermons,' ii. 239), that if he had written the 
History of the Creation, the world itself would not have 
held his work. 



Dr. Mead's Library, 45 

part in Coleridge's 'Ancient Mariner.' * I had 
been reading,' says W. W., ' in Shelvocke's 
Voyages, a day or two before, that, while doub- 
ling Cape Horn, they frequently saw albatrosses 
in that latitude, the largest sort of sea-fowl, 
some extending their wings twelve or thirteen 
feet. " Suppose," said I, '' you represent him 
[Coleridge's ' Old Navigator,' as he was called 
at first] as having killed one of these birds on 
entering the South Sea, and that the tutelary 
spirits of these regions take upon them to avenge 
the crime." ^ The incident was thought fit for 
the purpose, and adopted accordingly.' Here 
again, at p. 134, is Richard Ligon, Gent., his 
' Trve & Exact History of the Island of Barba- 
does/ not the first edition, but the folio of 1673,^ 
whence Steele elaborated that touching story of 
the heartless Inkle and the beautiful Yarico 
which figures in No. 11 of the 'Spectator,' and 
which the younger Colman turned into an opera. 
* I was the other Day,' says Steele, ' amusing 
my self with Ligon s Account of Barbadoes [his 

1 Wordsworth does not say, and perhaps forgot, that 
the shooting of the Albatross is also in Shelvocke. Hatley, 
the second Captain, a melancholy, superstitious man, 
killed it in hopes that its death would bring a fair wind. 

2 The copy in the British Museum belonged to Sir 
Hans Sloane, and bears his autograph. 



46 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

own first wife, it will be remembered, had been 
a Barbadian heiress] ; and ... I will give you 
(as it dwells upon my Memory) out of that 
honest Traveller, in his fifty fifth Page, the His- 
tory of Inkle and Yarico.'' Mead had also Lord 
Molesworth's ' Account of Denmark as it was 
in the Year 1692,' a passage from which is 
thought to have prompted another * owre true 
tale' in ' Tatler,' No. 94 — the story of Clarinda 
and Chloe. Both love Philander : Philander 
loves Chloe. The ladies go in masks with 
Philander to the theatre ; a fire breaks out ; 
Philander saves Clarinda first by mistake, but 
returns to die with Chloe. The situation is 
highly dramatic, and Steele depicts it sympathet- 
ically. Other books in the Catalogue are equally 
suggestive. Who, for instance, can come upon 
the quarto numbered 912, the ' Institvtiones ac 
Meditationes in Grsecam Lingvam' of the learned 
Nicolaus Clenardus, Frankfort, 1588, without 
thinking instantly of Johnson ? 'Why, Sir,' — 
he seems to ask sonorously of Langton, — ' who 
is there in this town who knows any thing of 
Clenardus but you and I ? ' — an inquiry which 
he might probably repeat to-day with even less 
chance of contradiction.^ And so one goes 

1 Matthew Prior the poet — it may be noted — must 
have known something of this particular scholiast, for one 



Dr. Mead's Library. 47 

down the list. Baptista Porta ' De Humana 
Physiognomonia,' Vico Equense, fol. 1^86. Is 
not this the Porta of Addison (' Spectator,' No. 
86) and Gay's * Dog and Fox ' ? — 

* Sagacious Porta's skill could trace 
Some beast or bird in ev'ry face,' — 

a feat, by the by, which was also performed by 
the late Charles H. Bennett. And Quincy's 
' College Dispensatory ' ? ' Questionless ' (as 
Mrs. Charlotte Lenox would say), this must be 
an ' early state ' of that very manual from which, 
in * She Stoops to Conquer,' maternal Mrs. 
Hardcastle was wont to physic her hopeful Tony 
Lumpkin. ' I have gone through every receipt 
in the complete huswife ten times over,' he com- 
plains ; ' and you have thoughts of coursing me 
through "Quincy" next spring.' Then there 
is Turnbull on ' Ancient Painting,' large paper, 
Alas 1 all its large paper could not save it from 
being wheeled, in Hogarth's print of Beer Street, 
to ' Mr. Pastern,' the Trunk Maker in Paul's 
Church Yard, cheek by jowl with Hill on the 

of his unpublished MSS. at Longleat (Wilts.) is entitled 
* Dialogue between Charles the Emperor and Clenardus 
the Grammarian' ('Hist. MSS. Comm.', 3rd Rept, App., 
p. 194). But he can scarcely have been familiar to Bos- 
well, who, in his first edition, calls him Clmardus. 



43 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

* Royal Society/ and Lauder on ' Milton,' both 
of which also had hospitable harbourage on the 
shelves at Great Ormond Street. The list is one 
that might easily be extended ; but we have room 
for only two books more, endeared to us by 
their connection with Thomas Bewick. It was 
from Francis Barlow's folio ' iEsop ' that (through 
Croxall) Bewick borrowed the compositions of 
many of the ' Select Fables ' of 1784 ; and it 
was in Pierre Belon's, ' Histoire de la Nature 
des Oyseaux ' (' Belon's very old book,' he calls 
it), Paris, ' \n Pingui Gallina,' i^^^, that he 
made some of the preliminary studies for his 
' Land and Water Birds,' — masterpieces which 
assuredly, had they been published fifty years 
earlier, would have found an honoured place in 
the ' Bibliotheca Meadiana.' 

Under a glass case in the Library of the Col- 
lege of Physicians is the famous gold-headed 
and crutch-handled cane which, belonging orig- 
inally to Dr. Radcliffe, passed in turn to Drs. 
Mead, Askew, Pitcairn, and Baillie, and was 
ultimately presented to the College by Baillie's 
widow. Its chronicles, recorded first by Dr. 
Macmichael, sometime Registrar of that Institu- 
tion, have been excellently edited and continued 
by his successor. Dr. Munk, from whose pages 
some of the data for the foregoing paper have 



Dr. Mead's Library. 49 

been derived. In the Censor's Room is another 
memorial of Mead in the shape of his bust by 
Roubillac, — a memorial which we owe to the 
pious care of the Doctor's friend and disciple 
Askew. Whether it was executed during Mead's 
lifetime is not quite clear ; but as Roubillac died 
in 1762, it must certainly have been executed 
while the memory of his face and features was 
still fresh in the minds of many of his contem- 
poraries — to say nothing of the fact that, as in 
the case of Newton, the sculptor may have 
worked from a death-mask. Moreover, as far 
back as 1740, Mead had been painted by Allan 
Ramsay in a portrait which is now in the 
National Portrait Gallery, and might well have 
formed the basis of a bust, even of a later date. 
But however this may be, there is ample testi- 
mony to the fact that the somewhat bent and 
dignified personage in the furred ' night-gown ' 
and silk cap, with the protruded under-lip which 
characterises so many eighteenth-century pre- 
sentments (Fielding's, Gray's Macklin's, for 
instance), faithfully depicts the Mead of 1750 
or thereabouts. ' I,' said the ornithologist 
Edwards, ' who was as well acquainted with his 
face as any man living, do pronounce this bust 
of him to be so like that so often as I see it my 
mind is filled with the strongest idea of the 

4 



5© Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

original.' Dr. Askew, for whom it was carved, 
gave, if possible, even more unhesitating proof 
of his approval, since, having agreed with Rou- 
billac for £^0, he was so pleased with the result 
of his labours, that he paid him ;^ioo. But here 
ensues a less intelligible part of the story. Rou- 
billac, it is alleged, was still dissatisfied, and 
handed in a supplementary account for ;^8 25., 
which Askew discharged, shillings included, 
afterwards ' enclosing the receipt to Hogarth to 
produce [apparently as a curiosity in extortion] 
at the next meeting of artists.' This is one of 
those imperfect and tantalising anecdotes upon 
which the discreet critic can only postpone judg- 
ment indefinitely — ' pending the production of 
further evidence.' 



GROSLEY'S ' LONDRES/ 

' A N Englishman has sense without wit : a 
•^"^ Frenchman has wit without sense.' Such, 
at least, is a definition suggested in that lively 
little comedy, * Le Franfais k Londres.' By 
combining these qualities on either side, the 
author, M. Louis de Boissy, creates two highly 
respectable characters ; and it is upon the Fran- 
<^ais raisonnable of the piece, M. le Baron de 
Polinville, that its Anglais poll — who rejoices 
in the Hugo-like name of ' Milord Graff' — be- 
stows his desirable daughter Eliante. But there 
are two others of M. de Boissy's dramatis per- 
sonce who correspond more exactly to the tra- 
ditional natives of France and England, to wit, 
the Baron's cousin, the Marquis de Polinville, 
and the English merchant, Jacques Rosbif. The 
Marquis is a vainglorious, vivacious, and rather 
amusing coxcomb ; the Englishman, on the con- 
trary, taciturn, phlegmatic, and boorish, is a 
true blood-relation of that other historic 

' Jean Rosbif, ficuyer, 
Qui se pendit pour se desennuyer.* 



52 Eighteenth Century l^ignettes. 

Both, of necessity, would be somewhat exag- 
gerated for stage purposes ; but while the Mar- 
quis is a conceivable portrait, the other is a 
caricature. Not the less he represents — with 
far greater fidelity than ' Milord Craff,' whose 
nationality is the No-Man's- Land of the foot- 
lights — what, about 1727 (the date of * Le 
Fran^ais k Londres '), was the received French 
notion of the average inhabitant of this perfidi- 
ous realm ; that is to say, he represents a per- 
sonality of whose domestic environment the 
generally untravelled Parisian knew literally 
nothing. Up to the date quoted, indeed, there 
had been but two recognized books by French- 
men professing to describe England from actual 
inspection — the ' Relation d'un Voyage en 
Angleterre ' of the Sieur Samuel de Sorbi^res, 
upon certain misstatements in which Thomas 
Sprat had angrily ' observed' in 1665,^ and the 
' Lettres sur les Anglais' of Muralt, translated 
in 1726. After these came, in 1734, the famous 
' Lettres Philosophiques ' of Voltaire^ to whom 
followed, at a respectful distance, the Abb6 Le 
Blanc, who (like his accomplished predecessor) 

I Under the title of 'A Journey to England in the 
Year 1663,' the volume of M. de Sorbieres has been 
made the subject of an interesting article by M. Jusserand 
(* English Essays from a French Pen,' 1895, pp. 158-192). 



Grosley's ' LondresJ' 53 

had for some time resided in this country. But 
none of these books — and certainly not that of 
Sorbieres — could be said to be wholly free from 
those ' strokes of national rancour and antipathy,' 
which are begotten of imperfect knowledge and 
long conflict by sea and land ; and it was not 
until the opening and the close of the ' Seven 
Years' War' that France succeeded in really 
learning something authoritative of English habits 
and customs. In 1758 was translated and issued 
at the Hague Dr. John Brown's once popular 
' Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the 
Times ' — ' the inestimable estimate of Brown/ 
as Cowper ironically calls it ; — and at the be- 
ginning of 1765 M. Pierre Jean Grosley made 
that brief excursion to these shores which served 
him for the basis of his ' Londres ' — a work 
which one of the critics of his nation has de- 
scribed as the first livre (Tensemhle composed by 
a Frenchman upon the English. 

Before proceeding to M. Grosley's pages let 
us present M. Grosley himself. Born in 1718, 
at Troyes in Champagne, he was by profession 
an advocate. But the acquisition of a compe- 
tence in early life left him free to devote himself 
in great measure to travel, to antiquarian studies, 
and to the cultivation of a kind of Rabelaisian 
humour, which — like the cheerfulness of the 



54 Eighteenth Century Fignettes. 

philosopher in Boswell — was always asserting 
itself at unseasonable moments. His incor- 
rigible habit of throwing the reins upon his very 
vagrant fancy, without regard to the nature of 
his theme, made it impracticable (says M.Dacier, 
the author of his * Eloge ') to find a place in the 
plain-sailing Proceedings of the AcaMmie Royale 
des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, which numbered 
him in its ranks, for any of his half-learned, half- 
burlesque ' Memoires.' These disqualifications 
for gravity, nevertheless, did not prevent him 
from producing a good many works, among 
which his ' Eph^m^rides Troyennes ' and ' Trav- 
els in Italy ' are reckoned the most noteworthy. 
His personal appearance must have been fully 
in keeping with his other peculiarities, and had 
Smollett not been broad, would probably have 
attracted the attention of the creator of Lisma- 
hago and Captain Weazel. Above the ordinary 
height, and withal exceptionally dry, lean and 
bony of make, his figure was surmounted by a 
head too small for his body, out of which head 
looked, under bushy brows, a pair of green and 
deep-set, but very bright and penetrating eyes. 
He had a long -neck, and a complexion of so 
preternatural a pallor that even he himself de- 
scribed it with grim humour as a visage d'extrime- 
onction; while without being positively, like 



Grosley's ^ Londres.' 55 

Macbeth's witches, ' wild in his attire,' his cos- 
tume (at such times as it was not merely old- 
fashioned) must have been undeniably, and of 
set purpose, eccentric. He carried his contempt 
of conventionality so far as to perambulate his 
native town in night-cap, dressing-gown, and 
slippers — varying this in later years by a sort 
of loose surtout of red camlet, lined with cat- 
skins, which came down to his heels, and in 
which he must have closely resembled the pan- 
taloon of Italian comedy. Indeed, it is asserted 
that he had adapted this garment from a picture 
of St. Pantaleon in the church of that saint at 
Troyes. Although scholarly, and particularly 
well versed in law and in Greek and Latin 
authors, he was (likeSorbi^res) wholly ignorant 
of English ; but, upon the precedent of Panurge, 
who contended that he heard better when he 
had taken to spectacles, M. Grosley affirms that 
his inability to understand our tongue did but 
enhance and intensify his native acuteness of 
vision. He describes, he says, what he actually 
saw, after the manner of Herodotus ; and it is 
with what he saw, and not with what he sub- 
sequently ' read up' in his study at Troyes, that 
our paper is concerned. 

Transivi ut viderem sapieniiam, erroresque 6- 
stultitiam, says the motto from the Vulgate to 



56 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

this traveller's title-page. Upon such an errand, 
one would think, it was unnecessary to cross 
the Channel ; and, in any case, in eight weeks, 
he could scarcely hope to exhaust the subject. 
Yet in eight weeks much may come to pass ; 
and M. Grosley was fortunate in happening 
upon an unusually eventful time. Already King 
George III. had been attacked by the first of 
those mysterious illnesses which ultimately in- 
capacitated him as a practising monarch, and to 
this, during M. Grosley's sojourn among us, 
was to follow the second Regency Bill, with all 
its anti-Bute plotting and counter-plotting. Then 
Lord Byron had killed his cousin Mr. Chaworth 
of Nottinghamshire in a quarrel at the ' Star and 
Garter ' in Pall Mall ; and the galleries had 
already been erected for his lordship's trial by 
his peers in Westminster Hall. Moreover, the 
Spitalfields weavers were to make new demon- 
strations against the clandestine importation of 
French silks, marching in their thousands, under 
black banners, to St. James's and the House of 
Lords, and actually beleaguering, in his Blooms- 
bury mansion, his august Grace the Duke of 
Bedford, who had thrown out a Bill for their 
relief. It is true that at this date some notable 
and notorious personages were unavoidably ab- 
sent from London. Mr. Laurence Sterne, for 



Grosleys ' Londres.* 57 

instance, who had not long published Vols. VII. 
and VIII. of his 'Tristram Shandy,' was at the 
Bath, and Mr. Garrick was at Paris — whence, 
however, he was on the point of returning, 
heralding his advent, more suo, by his own 
anonymous fable of the ' Sick Monkey.' Mr. 
Whitefield was still in America ; Mr. John 
Wilkes was luxuriating at Naples ; and Miss 
' Iphigenia ' Chudleigh had betaken herself to 
the German Waters. On the other hand, there 
were rumours that Rousseau was coming to 
England, and (perhaps) the Duke de Nivernais ; 
while if Roscius was not rejoicing his admirers 
at Drury Lane, Foote would soon be delighting 
the devotees of broad-grin at the Little Theatre 
in the Haymarket. At Vauxhall and Ranelagh, 
the season was approaching ; and the exhibition 
of the Society of Artists * at the Great Room in 
Spring Garden' was on the point of opening. 
Besides all this, M. Grosley would find indica- 
tions in England of some of those things he had 
left behind him. There was, in the first place, 
that ' fugacious ' monster, the Wild Beast of the 
G^vaudan, whose carcase, a few months later, 
Horace Walpole would inspect in the Queen's 
ante-chamber at Versailles, exhibited by two 
chasseurs ' with as much parade as if it was Mr. 
Pitt,' but which was now still ' on the rampage/ 



58 Eighteenth Century l^ignettes. 

being carefully followed in its career of crime by 
the St. James's Chronicle.' There was a very 
pretty quarrel between the French Ambassador, 
the Count de Guerchy, and M. D'Eon de Beau- 
mont, who not only (in his correspondence) 
compared his Excellency to the Beast aforesaid, 
but maintained that M. de Guerchy had procured 
a certain lean and impecunious Treyssac de 
Vergy to attempt his (D'fion's) life ; — and the 
popular voice in England was on the side of M. 
D'^on.^ Lastly, there was M. Buyrette de 
Belloy's tragedy of the ' Si^ge de Calais,' which, 
with its anti-English spirit, was at the height of 
its vogue when Grosley left the French capital, 
and was naturally attracting the attention of the 
London prints. The great ' M. Garrique ' — 

1 Of this M. Grosley himself gives an instance. At 
one of the exhibitions was a slightly-worked portrait of 
De Guerchy by Michael Vanloo, first painter to the King 
of Spain. Above it was ostentatiously hung a magnifi- 
cent full-length of D'Eon in his uniform as a captain of 
dragoons, a richly-laced hat pulled fiercely over his eyes, 
one hand upon his sword hilt with the air of a swash- 
buckler {' d'un air de matamore '), and the other opening 
a copy of his recently published ' Me moires ' (1764). ' I 
never passed before the two pieces,' says the author of 
* Londres,' 'but all the English present, men and women, 
•were so kind as to let me know, that the large figure 
represented the chevalier d'Eon, and the little one was 
the portrait of the French Ambassador.* 



Grosleys * Londres.' 59 

it was rumoured from the ' Brussels Gazette ' — 
contemplated its transfer to Drury Lane, and an 
English version was, as a matter of fact, actually 
prepared by Robert Lloyd's friend, Charles 
Denis. But there is no record that this version 
was ever placed upon the boards. 

Owing to the popularity of M. de Belloy's 
play — M. Grosley tells us — he decided at first 
to start for England from Calais. He was, how- 
ever, ultimately persuaded by friends to embark 
from Boulogne, at which place only a few months 
earlier (and probably in the Rue Neuve Chaus- 
s^e), Churchill had breathed his last. But 
M. Grosley knew nothing of Churchill, although, 
before leaving Boulogne, he paid his respects to 
the burial-place of Lesage.^ He set sail on 
April II, in the sloop of a Captain Meriton 
whose vocation it was to carry French clarets in 
bottle to Dover and London. The passage was 
a stormy one ; yet, ' fortified by that resignation 

1 In a cemetery in the Upper Town, which once occu- 
pied the site of the Petit Seminaire, Rue de Lille. With 
the Revolution the cemeteries were moved outside the 
city, and it is not now known where lie the bones of the 
author of 'Gil-Bias/ He died 17 November, 1747, in his 
eightieth year, at No. 3, Rue du Chateau, the residence of 
his second son, Julien-Frangois, who was a Canon of the 
Cathedral of Notre-Dame. A black marble slab was 
placed over the door in 1820 by the Societe d' Agriculture. 



6o Eighteenth Century yignettes. 

to Death which ought to be the first travelling 
requisite of all who undertake voyages of curi- 
osity,' M. Grosley fared better than most of his 
fellow-passengers. Two of these were an Eng- 
lishwoman and her ' very amiable daughter,' 
residents at Boulogne, who, in concert with ' a 
tall old Irishman, passing as an officer ' (one 
wonders if his name was Costigan I), seem to 
have contrived that their French companion 
should defray a material part of their passage 
money. At Dover, where they presently ar- 
rived, M. Grosley was struck (like Pastor 
Moritz) with the towering and barbaric inn- 
signs. He was also impressed with the dapper 
postilions of the post-chaises ; and he proceeded 
without delay to experiment on the grilled bifteks 
of the country. He could see, he says, no 
trace of any place of worship — a statement 
which his English translator very properly de- 
clines to reproduce. As Dover swarmed with 
travellers, chiefly French, the standing order as 
to Sunday traffic was suspended, and M. Grosley 
set out for London in a ' Flying Machine.' 
One advantage of this Sunday journeying was 
that, except where they dangled from gibbets at 
the wayside, ^dressed from head to foot, and 
with wigs on their heads,' nothing was seen of 
any of the dreaded ' Gentlemen of the Road.' 



Grosleys ' Londres' 6i 

On the other hand, the absence of Custom 
House vigilance afforded a favourable opportu- 
nity for the delivery by the coach at the different 
hostelries of a good deal of contraband brandy. 
At Canterbury M. Grosley was shown the ' Red 
Lion,' where (as already narrated in an earlier 
paper^) the Duke de Nivernais had been fleeced 
three years before ; and, like Nivernais, he ad- 
mired on his drive from Rochester the full-flowing 
river, and the riante verdure of the rich Kent 
landscape. At sundown, when the lamps were 
already lighted on Westminster Bridge, he found 
himself rolling into London. 

With his arrival in the metropolis, where he 
at once settled himself in lodgings near the con- 
genial quarter of Leicester Fields, M. Grosley 
ceases to narrate his experiences in the order of 
their occurrence, but distributes his impressions 
under such general headings as ' The People,' 
' Public Diversions,' ' The Polite Arts,' and so 
forth. For a stranger who held that no one 
but a fool meddles with foreign tongues after 
forty, and the sum total of whose two months' 
conversational achievements in England was con- 
fined to ' very good ' and ' very wel,' judiciously 
placed, it might be supposed that his difficulties 

1 'Nivernais in England/ in * Eighteenth Century 
Vignettes,' 1894, pp. 107-137. 



62 Eighteenth Century yignettes. 

would be almost unsurmountable. But in reality 
they were less than they looked. His landlord, 
M. Martin, was a Frenchman, in whose house 
both French and English were spoken ; and M. 
Grosley had introductions to many persons of 
rank and education, who, like Lord Temple and 
Lord Chesterfield, possessed his own language 
to perfection, in addition to this, most of his 
mornings were spent in long questionings and 
cross-questionings of that ' Marcellus of Scot- 
land ' (as Boswell calls him), and friend of 
Sterne, Sir James Macdonald, whose unusual 
linguistic gifts and scholarly attainments were 
so speedily to be buried in a premature grave at 
Rome.^ It is probable, indeed, that Grosley's 
book owes considerably more to Sir James than 
is covered by its grateful acknowledgments. 
He also refers repeatedly to the extreme civility 
and kindness with which he was everywhere 
treated by the upper and middle classes, particu- 
larly the citizens and shopkeepers. It is of the 
lower orders alone that his report is unfavour- 
able. The people disliked the Peace; and — 
as M. Grosley found to his cost — they detested 
and insulted all foreigners. ' My French air,' 

1 Even Walpole, who met him at Paris a few months 
later, testifies to the gifts of this * very extraordinary young 
man.* He died in 1766. 



Grosleys ' Londres.' 63 

he says, ' drew upon me, at the corner of every 
street, a volley of abusive litanies, in the midst 
of which I slipped on, thanking my stars that I 
did not understand English.' Still, as he seems 
to have circulated freely among all sorts and 
conditions of chairmen, porters, and Chelsea 
watermen — not to mention the disaffected 
Spitalfields weavers already referred to — and 
to have even escaped a playful mob in Seven 
Dials who had been baulked in their desire to 
pelt a gentleman in the pillory with dead dogs 
and rotten eggs, he cannot be said to have been 
exceptionally unfortunate. His servant, how- 
ever, who was ill advised enough to go to Ty- 
burn on ' Execution Day,' was not so lucky. 
Returning with the crowd down Oxford Road, 
he was mobbed and maltreated. Jack Ketch 
himself (who figures in M. Grosley's pages as 
' Sir Jaquett, maitre des hautes-ceuvres ') taking 
joyous part in the game. He was finally rescued, 
half-dead and utterly demoralized, by three 
grenadiers of the French Guard (deserters), 
who, making a successful sortie from an ale- 
house, brought him off in safety.^ 

1 The victory was not always with the popular side. 
In 1763, M. de la Condamine, assailed in the streets of 
London by opprobrious reflections on his parentage, turned 
the tables adroitly on his tormentors by replying in broken 



64 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

M. Grosley does not, as he might, include 
this incident under his chapter of ' Public Diver- 
sions.' But it is part of his erratic method that 
his headings often relate to the subjects treated 
as remotely as the titles of his favourite Mon- 
taigne do to the matter of the ' Essays.' His 
* Public Diversions ' discourses among other 
things, of pickpockets and thieves, but his de- 
scription of Vauxhall and Ranelagh, both of 
which he visited, comes in the section headed 
' Clubs.' The account he gives of the two 
gardens differs little from that contained in the 
guide-books. But it adds one more testimony 
to the beauty of the coup d'ceil at Ranelagh, 
v^^hen the lighted Rotunda was filled with com- 
pany, and ' music arose with its voluptuous 
swell.' In Vauxhall he testifies to the merit of 
Hayman's four great pictures of English Con- 
quest, though, as might perhaps be expected, 
somewhat grudgingly. * The national antipathy 
of the English to the French (he observes) seems 

English : * Have a care, my friends, my mother was an 
Englishwoman.* Upon another occasion, the famous 
Maurice de Saxe, a man of great physical strength, being 
challenged to fight by a scavenger, craftily permitted his 
opponent to come on, and then, to the delight of the 
spectators, dexterously tilted him into his own mud cart, 
much as — in ' Our Mutual Friend ' — the artful Sloppy 
disposes of Mr. Silas Wegg. 



Groslefs ' Londres.* 65 

to have raised the imagination and the hand of 
the painter above what the pencil of an English- 
man is capable of producing ; ' and he goes on, 
with perfect justice, to lay this species of pictorial 
insult to foreign nations at the door of Louis 
XIV., by which he must be understood to refer 
to those boastful battle-pieces of Le Brun which 
prompted the patriotic mot of Prior. ^ As re- 
gards the Stage he can hardly be expected to 
say much, since the plays he went to, though no 
doubt submitted oculis fidelibus, could not be 
considered as confided acutis auribus. There is 
an instance of this in his report of a visit to the 
Little Theatre in the Haymarket. He says he 
saw Foote, and he describes minutely what he 
saw, namely : ' an actor behind a kind of counter, 
surrounded by wig-blocks, wigs, hats, and wo- 
men's headdresses, who, making his own head 
and periwig part of the Farce, took off all 
nations, all conditions, and all states of life in a 
series of laughable dialogues — the whole con- 
stituting a species of Encyclopidie perruquUre in 
action.' Unhappily, though the Haymarket was 
unquestionably Foote's theatre, it was not ' M. 
Fout ' (as he writes him) whom M. Grosley be- 
held on this occasion, but that eccentric strolling 
player and vocalist, George Alexander Stevens^ 

1 See ' Matthew Prior/ in this volume. 
5 



66 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

whose once popular * Lecture on Heads' began 
its long vogue at Footers house. At Drury 
Lane and Covent Garden, M. Grosley was im- 
pressed (like Addison and M. Rapin before him) 
by the very inhuman and bloodthirsty character 
of the tragedies of the author he calls ' Sakhe- 
spear.' * Whatever the most brutal cruelty or 
the most refined wickedness can conceive, is 
presented to view,' he says ; and he goes on 
to relate that his landlord's son, a boy about 
nine or ten, had grievously alarmed the house- 
hold at Leicester Fields by going into nightly 
convulsions after being taken to see ' Gentle- 
man ' Smith in * Richard IH.' But he confesses 
that the affecting situations were rendered with 
so much power that they moved him to tears. 
Lord Chesterfield seems to have done his best 
to remove this impression, by attributing it solely 
to his ignorance of English. If he had fully 
understood the speakers — said that cynical 
nobleman — the platitudes connected with the 
incidents would have destroyed all the charm of 
the action.^ Of our comedies, M. Grosley, in 

^ Lord Chesterfield cared little for Shakespeare, and 
no doubt preferred the author of the ' Henriade.' At this 
date his lordship was over seventy. "Writing to his son 
about the D'Eon and Guerchy quarrel, he says : — * I see 
and hear these storms from shore, suave tnari magnoy etc. 



Grosleys ' Londres.' 67 

common with other French critics, conceived a 
poor idea, regarding them as neglectful of the 
unities and needlessly involved in plot ; but as 
he must have assisted at pieces by Wycherley, 
Congreve, and Vanbrugh, v\^e may perhaps, with 
Lord Chesterfield, lay something to his lack of 
our language. Where he is speaking of an 
adaptation from the French, however, he must 
be allowed a competent judge ; and it is possible 
that his criticisms upon the actor (one Dyer) 
who played the part of Oberon in Mrs. Gibber's 
version of * L'Oracle ' of Saint-Foix, are not 
undeserved.-^ ' Charmant ' [this is the name 
given to Oberon throughout the comedy by the 
heroine] ' was performed in this piece by a little 

I enjoy my own security and tranquillity, together with 
better health than I had reason to expect, at my age, and 
with my constitution: however, I feel a gradual decay, 
though a gentle one ; and I think that I shall not tumble, 
but slide gently to the bottom of the hill of life. When 
that will be, I neither know nor care, for I am very weary ' 
(* Letters,' April 22, 1765). 

1 He says this was at Drury Lane. But it must have 
been at Covent Garden, where * The Oracle,' which, in 
1765, according to contemporary advertisements, had not 
been acted for twelve years, was produced for one night 
in May, following 'Richard III.,' 'the entire performance 
being for the benefit of Mr. Younger.' It does not seem 
to have been revived again during Grosley's stay in 
London. 



68 Eighteenth Century Fignettes. 

man in an overcoat, frigid as marble, and who 
had no other way of expressing the tenderness 
and perplexity, which are the soul of the part, 
than by frequently biting the ends of his fingers.' 
Of the Italian Opera M. Grosley reports but 
little, though here he would obviously be no 
worse off than a native auditor. He heard, he 
tells us, at Covent Garden [King's Theatre in 
the Haymarket], the ' Ezio ' of Metastasio ; but 
he seems to have been entirely engrossed with 
the uncontrollable hilarity induced in two young 
Englishwomen near him by the ludicrous contrast 
between the soprano voice and the masculine 
physique of the leading singer.^ 

As a connoisseur who decorated his birthplace 
of Troyes with busts of its local celebrities, 
M. Grosley might be expected to speak with 
some authority upon the state of the ' Polite 

1 Among other disturbing insular customs, M. Grosley 
was much exercised by the little train-bearers {caudataires)^ 
in liveries that fitted them more or less, who ran about 
the stage to adjust the trailing robes of the heroines, as 
they were hurried to and fro by the tumult of their ficti- 
tious feelings. Fifty-four years earlier Addison had also 
commented upon this anomaly in much the same way : — 
* It is, in my Opinion, a very odd Spectacle, to see a Queen 
venting her Passion in a disordered Motion, and a little 
Boy taking Care all the while that they do not ruffle the 
Tail of her Gown ' (* Spectator,' April i8, 171 1). 



Grosley's ' Londres.* 69 

Arts ' in this country. Hogarth, of course, was 
dead when he came to Leicester Fields. But 
M. Grosley saw in Hampton House the famous 
Election Series now in the Soane Museum. He 
compares them to the work of the elder Breughel, 
calling them indeed ' pure realism, but realism 
too crude and too truthful ' — a definition with 
which one can scarcely quarrel. But he is 
wrong in adding that Hogarth left them to Gar- 
rick, by will, since Garrick bought them cheaply 
for 50 guineas apiece. It is more than a slip of 
the pen, again, to say that the ' Analysis of 
Beauty ' is based upon an obscure passage in 
Pliny; it derives from a saying of Michael 
Angelo. These, however, are trifles concerning 
which he might readily have been misled. He 
went, of course, to the Spring Garden exhibi- 
tion, where he saw a picture by ' M. Raynolds' 
representing ' une Ladi sacrifiant aux Graces.' 
He would probably have been more interested 
if he had known that the ' ladi ' in question had 
narrowly escaped wearing the crown of England 
— being indeed none other than that beautiful 
Lady Sarah Bunbury (n^e Lenox), sister of the 
third Duke of Richmond, who, albeit Mrs. 
Thrale reports her more addicted to beefsteaks 
and cricket on the Steyne at Brighton than 
* sacrificing to the Graces,' had nevertheless 



70 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

aroused, in the susceptible breast of George III., 
a tendre which Time never wholly extinguished. 
M. Grosley also praises, as from the same 
brush, a portrait of the Marquis of Granby on 
horseback. But here, once again, he must 
have been at fault, for what he actually saw was 
Gainsborough's General Honeywood riding 
through the trees, which was not only a chief 
feature of the exhibition, but also one of the 
artist's finest works. He mentions no other 
painting, although Zoffany's ' Garrick in the 
'* Provoked Wife '' ' (i. e. as Sir John Brute) ,^ 
and the admirable ' Gladiator ' of Joseph Wright 
of Derby might have been expected to appeal to 
him. On the other hand, he characterises Allan 
Ramsay, who was not an exhibitor, compactly 
in a footnote. ' II a fait,' he says, ' des portraits 
qui ont du colons, de Texpressionet du dessein. 
II est peintre du roi et homme tr^s instruit.* 
This, for brevity and conciseness, is a pattern 
* appreciation.' 

Sculpture in England, when M. Grosley visited 
us, was but in a languishing condition, being 
mainly monumental. Of the artists whose works 
he admired in Westminster Abbey, his com- 
patriot Roubillac was dead ; and Scheemakers 
and Rysbrack were no longer active. The 

1 See pp. 13 and 27 of this volume. 



Grosleys ^ Londres.' 71 

leading native statuary at this date was Joseph 
Wilton, in whose studio he inspected the clay 
model of Wolfe's monument — a work which is 
regarded as the artist's masterpiece. He also 
saw in the same place, destined for erection at 
Cork, an unfinished figure of Pitt, soon to be 
Earl of Chatham. The only other sculptor's 
workshop he seems to have visited was that of 
the Hanoverian Moore, then engaged upon a 
statue, in Roman costume, of Lord Mayor 
Beckford, for whom Moore had also designed 
an elaborate mantelpiece, carved with death- 
scenes from the ' Iliad.' Of engraving on copper 
M. Grosley says nothing, although the shops 
must have been full of examples from the burins 
of Strange and Bartolozzi. But he was greatly 
interested by the boldness of the political carica- 
tures. One which particularly attracted him by 
its frank satire of the majesty of the law was 
manifestly the 'Bench' of Hogarth — memor- 
able also as being the last plate on which that 
artist worked. These popular prints were to be 
found chiefly in the shops near Westminster 
Hall, where on April 16 and 17, or only a few 
days after his arrival, he assisted at the trial, by 
the House of Peers in full Parliament assembled, 
of William, fifth Lord Byron, Baron Byron of 
Rochdale, for the murder of Mr. Chaworth. 



72 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

Under the head of ' Criminal Jurisprudence ' he 
gives a detailed description of this impressive 
ceremonial : the scarlet hangings of the Hall ; 
the peers marching two and tw^o in their long- 
red robes faced with ermine ; the peeresses with 
their jewels and elaborate toilettes ; the Lord 
High Steward (Robert Henley) with his white 
rod of office ; the Lord Chamberlain with his, 
* but somewhat shorter ; ' the prisoner in his 
deep mourning, flanked by the serjeants-at-arms 
with their axes turned outwards ; and last, but 
not least, the little monkeys of schoolboys who 
munched apples on the steps of the throne itself, 
and tossed shreds of peel into the voluminous 
curls of the Rt. Hon. the Lord High Steward's 
periwig.^ The result of the trial, as is known, 
was that Lord Byron — who in "Westminster 
Hall simulated a contrition which he failed to 
maintain in after life — was found guilty of man- 
slaughter, pleaded his privilege as an hereditary 
legislator, and went away comfortably in a chair 
to his own house in Mortimer Street. Five 
days afterwards, M. Grosley saw him in his 
place in the House of Lords, taking part in the 

1 From M. Grosley's account it might be supposed that 
these were Eton boys. But they were probably West- 
minster King's scholars, who had long-standing privileges 
of this kind. 



Grosleys 'Londres.' 73 

debate on the Regency Bill. Through Lord 
Temple, M. Grosley had several opportunities 
of visiting the Upper House. He heard the 
King, whose voice he describes as ' sonorous, 
flexible, and persuasive ; ' he heard ' silver- 
tongued Murray ; ' he heard Lord Lyttleton, 
Lord Temple, Lord Pomfret, and the old Duke 
of Newcastle — the last, as he spoke, leaning 
familiarly with both hands ' on the shoulders of 
two young lords who sat in front of him on the 
second bench.' M. Grosley thought the elo- 
quence of the peers infinitely superior to the 
eloquence of the stage. In the Lower House, 
he was not fortunate enough to hear Pitt, who 
was at this time ailing and in retirement ; but he 
heard Beckford and George Grenville, neither 
of whom impressed him as distinguished. They 
stood up, he says, and addressed themselves to 
the Speaker's chair (the bureau du Spik — is 
M. Grosley's phrase), ' with legs apart, one 
knee bent, and one arm extended as if they 
were going to fence. They held forth for a long 
time, scarcely any one paying attention to what 
they said, except at such moments as the mem- 
bers of their party cried out in chorus, ya^ ya.' 
Many of these last, he observes elsewhere, con- 
fined themselves to this monosyllabic contribu- 
tion to debate ; and he instances one gentleman 



74 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

who for twenty years had never but once made 
a speech, and that was to move that a broken 
window at the back of his seat might be 
mended without loss of time. M. Grosley 
omits the name of this laconic emulator of 
'Singlespeech Hamilton,' but according to 
certain recently published records, he is to 
be identified with James Ferguson of Pitfour, 
afterwards Member for Aberdeenshire. De- 
spite his taciturnity in the House, ' old Pitty,' 
as he was called, was a noted humourist, who 
is credited with the probably earlier state- 
ment (not long since revived in * Punch ') that 
* he had heard many speeches which changed 
his opinion but never one that changed his 
vote.' ^ 

From that comfortable club, the House of 
Commons, one naturally turns to M. Grosley 
on clubs and coffee houses in general. But here 
he is scarcely as full as might be anticipated 
from such a gadabout, or rather he is more 
general than specific. Under this head he notes 
that the old pious salutation of any one who 
sneezed, which still prevailed in his own country, 

1 ' Records of the Clan and Name of Fergusson, Fer- 
guson, and Fergus.' Edited for The Clan Fergus(s)on 
Society by James Ferguson and Robert Menzies Fergus- 
son. Edinburgh : David Douglas, 1895. 



Groskys * Londres,' 75 

had been abolished in England by the use of 
snufF. He was given to understand that to 
salute a snufF-taker in these circumstances was 
like complimenting him on the colour of the hair 
of his wig. That colour, by the way, he an- 
nounces in another place, was usually reddish- 
brown, being chosen as least affected by the 
mud and dirt of the streets. This ingenious 
explanation, like his statement that Pope was 
not buried at Westminster because he was a 
Roman Catholic, and that Queen Anne in St, 
Paul's Churchyard wears a hoop, seems to sug- 
gest that some of his obliging informants must 
occasionally, in eighteenth-century parlance, 
have treated M. Grosley to a * bite.' But in 
saying that his chapter of clubs is disappointing, 
it must not be forgotten that he visited one 
very remarkable specimen of this all-popular 
Georgian institution — the society of ' Robin 
Hoodians,' at whose freethinking discussions 
Fielding pokes rather cumbrous fun in the 
* Covent Garden Journal.' This curious de- 
bating association — of which M. Grosley was 
advised by Lord Chesterfield — held its sittings 
in Fielding's day at Essex Street, Strand. But 
M. Grosley locates it in Fleet Market, which 
his translator converts into Butcher Row. 
Wherever it was held in 1765, however, our 



76 Eighteenth Century yignettes. 

Traveller attended a stance, paid his sixpence, 
consumed his mug of beer, and listened to the 
florid eloquence of the famous baker-president, 
which if it be true that both Burke and Henry 
Erskine were not ashamed to learn from his 
periods, must have been more than remark- 
able. Indeed, according to a pleasant anec- 
dote, he was not only oratorically but physi- 
cally impressive. Goldsmith, who went to the 
Robin Hoodians with Derrick of Bath, was 
completely overawed by the senatorial dignity 
of the chairman (this very baker), whom he 
thought Nature must at least have intended 
for a Lord Chancellor. ' No,' commented 
Derrick neatly, ' only for a Master of the 
Rolls: 

The Byron trial is one of the few incidents of 
his stay in England to which M. Grosley devotes 
anything like a sequent description, and even in 
this the episode of the schoolboys has somehow 
straggled into the section on ' English Melan- 
choly.' It is part of the author's rambling 
method that his personal experiences have to be 
picked out from the antiquarian ' padding ' with 
which he has overlaid them. But those who 
have the patience for such a sifting will find 
that they are gradually gaining a fair idea of the 
old dim-lighted London of the Georges, with its 



Grosley's ^ Londres.' 77 

dirty streets and ancient watchmen (ouachmen). 
In the 'course continuelle ' of his brief sojourn, 
M. Grosley certainly contrived to see more than 
many of the oldest inhabitants manage to achieve 
in a lifetime. He visited Bedlam, and drank a 

* dish of tea ' in the ' gayest and most noisy of all 
the Coteries he had seen,' a group of its female 
inmates ; he went to the races at Epsom, and 
dilates upon the love of the English for their 
horses ; he went to a cock-fight, which he re- 
garded as no better than child's play. He went 
to that ' nothing-plotting, nought-caballing, un- 
mischievous synod,' a Quakers' meeting, where 
he was fortunate enough to hear a speaker who 
reminded him of the Paris convulsionaries ; he 
went to Wesley's tabernacle at Moorfields ; he 
went also over Lindsey House, the home of the 
Moravian Society, concerning which, owing to 
some confusion of his recollections and his re- 
searches, he makes but a doubtful and an inac- 
curate report. He visited on several occasions 
the Royal Society, which elected him one of its 
foreign members ; he visited that younger but 
not less prosperous institution, the Society of 
Antiquaries. He travelled to Windsor, where 
he saw the Eton boys hugging a buxom shop- 
girl, and playing ' en chemise et en sueur' at an 

* esp^ce de paume * (cricket) ; he travelled to 



^S Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

Lord Temple's seat at Stowe, to the grottoes, 
columns, pyramids, and triumphal arches of 
which he consecrates a grateful appendix ; he 
travelled to that ' Gothic Vatican of Greece and 
Rome,' Strawberry Hill, though apparently with- 
out making the acquaintance of its accomplished 
' Abbot.' ^ Finally, although he did not see 
Garrick act at Drury Lane, he must have seen 
him act at home, for he managed to penetrate 
to the Villa at Hampton, where he was intro- 
duced to the Shakspearean temple and statue, 
concerning which latter he makes Roscius say : 
' Je dois tout k Sakhespear : si vivo <5n valeOy 
suum est ; c'est un faible temoignage d'une re- 
connaissance sans bornes.' Apart from the 
scrap of Latin, which was ' pretty Fanny's way,' 
the quotation is probably textual, as Mr. Garrick 
was fresh from the pleasant land of France, and 
would speak in M. Grosley's tongue. But, as 
we know, Mr. Garrick's ' reconnaissance sans 
bornes ' did not prevent him from driving an 

1 Walpole, however, saw his book. * I have read an 
account of Strawberry in a book called * Londres ; * in 
which my name is Robert, my house lives at Putney, the 
book-cases in the library are of inlaid woods, and I have 
not a window but is entirely of painted glass. This is 
called seeing and describing ' (* Letter to Mason,' May 4, 
1776.) 



Grosle/s ' LondresJ 79 

exceedingly close bargain with the sculptor, 
Roubillac.^ 

M. Grosley's volumes deserve a larger exam- 
ination than has been given to them in this essay. 
But we must forego for the present his curious 
and ingenious theories as to what Dr. Cheyne 
calls the ' English Malady ' of the spleen, to- 
gether with his proposed remedy, French light 
wines ; his doctrine of the causes of the national 
propensity to suicide, as evidenced by the skulls 
found in the bed of the Thames ; and his expla- 
nations and interpretations of a variety of things 
which, one is bound to allow, he treats in general 
with a bonhomie and an impartiality not often 
characteristic of his countrymen who deal with 
England and things English. When he got back 
to France (he returned as he came, by way of 

1 See 'Little Roubillac' in 'Eighteenth Century 
Vignettes/ 1894, p. 91. This paragraph does not, of 
course, pretend to exhaust the list of M. Grosley's per- 
sonal experiences. Among other individuals he encoun- 
tered in London was the so-called ' French Poet,' M. du 
Halley Descazeaux, an eccentric of whom Mr. J. Eliot 
Hodgkin has recently given some account in ' Notes and 
Queries,' May 9, 1896. Descazeaux (who died in the 
Rules of the Fleet in February, 1775) at this time seems 
to have been living on * proposals to print,' and laudatory 
verses to Lady Harrington, Nivernais, and others, some 
of which latter M. Grosley quotes in his first volume. 



So Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

Boulogne), he did not at once publish his im- 
pressions de voyage. He worked upon them 
during 1766 and 1767, supplementing his experi- 
ences * by a study of the History of England in 
its sources, and by combining the information so 
acquired with the actual state of men, things, 
and places,' a praiseworthy piece of application 
which produced some remarkable results in the 
way of obscure erudition, besides having the 
additional effect of filling his page-feet with illus- 
trative quotations from the ancients. His book, 
ready for press in the latter year, was not act- 
ually issued until early in 1770, when it appeared 
at Lausanne (for Paris) in three volumes. Its 
success was so encouraging that it was promptly 
pirated at Neuchatel, ' with the notes of an 
Englishman,' who professed to correct its more 
glaring misconceptions. One or two of these 
gave grave offence. Garrick, in particular, was 
greatly irritated by the account of a riot at 
Drury Lane, which represented him in a ridicu- 
lous aspect ; and M. de la Condamine also 
protested, politely but firmly, against certain 
inaccurate details connected with his own visit 
to this country two years before. In both in- 
stances Grosley made amende honorable to the 
complainants in the ' Journal Encyclop^dique,' 
In 1772 his book was done into English by that 



GrosUys ' Londres' 8i 

energetic translator, Dr. Thomas Nugent of the 
French Pocket Dictionary, who had already 
produced a version of the author's Italian travels. 
Dr. Nugent, who 'castigated' the text in some 
respects, might clearly — as shown in the course 
of this account — have ' castigated ' it still 
farther. In 1774, M. Grosley himself published, 
in four volumes, a new edition, ' revised, cor- 
rected, and considerably augmented,' one of the 
additions being a map of London. He died in 
November, 1785. Not long after his death 
appeared a curious ' life' by the Abbe Maydieu, 
Canon of the Cathedral of Troyes, three parts 
of which are made up of a disorganized autobi- 
ography of Grosley's earlier years, entitled 
' Commentarii de vita mea,' His will, printed 
at full in 1 8 10 with his ' Opuscules,' is charac- 
teristic. Pope speaks somewhere of those 
testators who 

* Die, and endow a college, or a cat.' 

M. Grosley did not endow a college. But he 
left three thousand livres to a learned colleague 
who, he considered had cultivated letters ' with- 
out self-assertion, intrigue, or undue desire of 
profit.' And he endowed two cats, whom he 
styles his commensaux (mess-mates), with an 
annuity of twenty-four livres. Also, he left to 

6 



82 Eighteenth Century Fignettes. 

his maid two hundred livres for mourning, which 
he dispensed her from wearing. He gave orders 
that he was to be buried like the poorest hos- 
pital patient, at the foot of the cross in the cem- 
etery where for sixty years had lain his morning 
walk. ^ Qui m'aime, me suive ' — was the only 
injunction as to followers. 



* POLLY HONEYCOMBED 

* 1\ /TADAM,' — says Sir Anthony Absolute, 
^^^ commenting on those marble-covered, 

half-bound volumes^ with which Mrs. Lucy in 

* The Rivals' was wont to supply Miss Lydia 
Languish, — ' Madam, a Circulating Library in 
a town is, as an evergreen tree of diabolical 
knowledge.' It is not uncharacteristic of Sheri- 
dan that something of the kind had been said 
before. Fifteen years earlier, the elder Colman 
had inaugurated his theatrical career with a one- 
act farce — or ' dramatick Novel,' as he calls it 
— the whole scheme of which is but Sir Anthony's 
aphorism ' writ large/ while its final moral — if 
moral there be — is much the same. ' A man,' 
says the heroine's father, ' might as well turn his 
Daughter loose in Covent-garden, as trust the 

1 They must have long survived the days of Sheridan. 

* You still read books in marble covers 
About smart girls and dapper lovers — * 

writes Macaulay to his sister Hannah in 1833 (Trevelyan's 
' Life,* ch. v.). 



84 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

cultivation of her mind to a Circulating Library/ 
Polly Honeycombe, the daughter in question, 
certainly justifies his Jeremiad. The child of 
steady-going tradesman parents, already middle- 
aged, but 

* Still amorous, and fond, and billing. 
Like Philip and Mary on a Shilling* 

this misguided young person dreams, after the 
fashion of Arabella in the ' Female Quixote,' of 
nothing but what she has learned from the leaves 
of Sir Anthony's pernicious perennial. But 
whereas Arabella is occupied exclusively by the 
impossible Clelias and Clidamiras of Scud^ry 
and La Calpren^de, Polly Honeycombe seeks 
her ideals in the more modern and more human 
productions of Richardson and Fielding, and 
their imitators. ' A Novel (she declares) is the 
only thing to teach a girl life, and the way of 
the world, and elegant fancies, and love to the 
end of the chapter.' To which her Nurse, a 
repetition, in more than one characteristic, of a 
similar ancient gentlewoman in ' Romeo and 
Juliet,' replies that, indeed, her young mistress 
is ' always reading her simple story-books, — 
the Ventures of Jack this, and the history of 
Betsy t'other, and Sir Humphrys, and women 
with hard Christian names.' The result is that 



'Polly Honeycomhe.' 85 

Miss Honeycombe knows the ' nature of a mas- 
querade as well as if she had been at twenty.' 
She flouts her father's chosen suitor, the 
moneyed and estimable Mr. Ledger, whom she 
asserts is ' ten times uglier than Solmes ' in 
' Clarissa,' and she openly prefers the frivolous 
Mr. Scribble, who not only ' writes as well as 
Bob Lovelace,' but contrives to persuade her 
that she is a ' constellation ' of the blended 
beauties of Narcissa, Clementina, Sophy Wes- 
tern and all her most cherished heroines. As a 
consequence she informs the luckless Ledger 
that she considers him ' a vile book of arithme- 
tick,' and * more tiresome than the multiplication 
table/ thereby pluming herself that she is out- 
topping Polly Barnes, Sophy Willis and sundry 
other self-respecting and high-minded young 
women of fiction in the gentle art of ' treating 
an odious fellow with spirit.' To these proceed- 
ings there can be but one issue, to wit, that, 
aided by her mother's regrettable weakness for 
the restorative cordials {lege strong waters) of 
Mr. Julep the apothecary, she elopes with 
Scribble, who turns out to be her Nurse*s 
nephew, and a mere attorney's clerk from Grace- 
church Street, — a discovery which has no other 
effect upon his infatuated inamorata than to set 
her conjecturing that, like Fielding's Foundling, 



86 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

he may chance to be a gentleman's son and that, 
when they are married, they may go through 
* as many distresses as Booth and Amelia.' Of 
Ledger — who at this point judiciously cries off 

— even when she is brought back, she will have 
nothing. He is ' as deceitful as Blifil, as rude 
as the Harlowes, and as ugly as Doctor Slop,' 
who, by the way, had only recently made his 
first appearance in the early volumes of ' Tristram 
Shandy.' And so comes down the curtain upon 
that already-quoted outburst of her perplexed 
and exasperated father.^ 

With Yates as the paternal Honeycombe, and 
King as Scribble, and Churchill's ' lively Pope' — 
the Miss Pope who afterwards shed histrionic 
tears over Lady Di. Beauclerk's ' incomparable' 
drawings to Walpole's ' Mysterious Mother' — 
in the part of Polly, the little piece must have 
gone admirably when, in December, 1760, it 
was produced by Garrick at Drury Lane. In- 
deed, in the Preface to the printed play, Colman 
specially acknowledges the kind reception which, 
in spite of an inconclusive d^noitment, the public 
had given to his work. Already, in his Pro- 

1 This little satire against the novel — it may be noted 

— has its parallel — perhaps its first suggestion — in 
Arthur Murphy's 'Apprentice,' 1756, which is directed 
against the stage. 



* Polly Honeycomhe.' 87 

logue, he had defined and described the class of 
Fiction at which he aimed. The Sorceress 
Romance with her distrest Maids ' on Milk- 
white Palfreys,' her Knights and Dwarfs, her 
Oroondates and Statira, had been killed by 
Cervantes. And now a younger sister had 
taken her place : — 

* Less solemn is her air, her drift the same. 
And Novel her enchanting, charming. Name. 
Romance might strike our grave Forefathers' pomp. 
But Novel for our Buck and lively Romp 1 
Cassandra's Folios now no longer read. 
See, Two Neat Pocket Volumes in their stead! 
And then so sentimental is the Stile, 
So chaste, yet so bewitching all the while ! 
Plot, and elopement, passion, rape, and rapture, 
The total sum of ev'ry dear — dear — Chapter. 
'T is not alone the Small-Talk and the Smart, 
'T is Novel most beguiles the Female Heart. 
Miss reads — she melts — she sighs — Love steals upon 

her — 
And then — Alas, poor Girl ! — good night, poor Honour I * 

To the Preface which preceded this Prologue, 
its author had added what, from a purely anti- 
quarian point of view, is now a valuable p'Uce 
justificative. It is an Extract, extending to some 
eight closely-printed columns of book-names, 
purporting to be transcribed by his own mother 
from a Circulating Library Catalogue which she 



88 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

had found in the back-parlour of Mr. Lutestring 
the Cheapside silk-mercer, where it lay upon 
the table in company with certain dog's-eared 
copies of the first volume of the ' Adventures of 
Mr. Loveill,' the third volume of ' Betsy 
Thoughtless,' and the current annual issue of the 
scandalous and still-surviving ' New Atalantis." 
It is, in short, a fairly exhaustive list of the pop- 
ular novels in circulation for the year 1760. 

The record thus presented, it must be owned, 
is scarcely a worshipful one, and the eye at once 
detects two or three titles that assuredly would 
not now be found at all in any reputable book- 
list. ' Rasselas,' which was just a year old in 
1760, isconspicuous by its absence ; but ' Zadig ; 
or, The Book of Fate ' is an obvious translation 
from Voltaire, as the ' Sopha ' is, no doubt, from 
the younger Crebillon. The ' Vicar of Wake- 
field ' had not yet been written ; but there are 
Fielding's three chief novels, several of Smollett's, 
and the ' Pamela,' * Clarissa,' and ' Grandison ' 
of Richardson. There are also the ' David 
Simple ' and ' Countess of Dellwin ' of Sarah 
Fielding, together with the ' dramatick Fable ' 
called ' The Cry,' which she wrote in conjunc- 
tion with Jane Collier. There are the novels of 
Mrs. Lenox, — * Harriot Stuart,' * Henrietta,' 
the ' Memoirs (from the French) of the Coun- 



'Polly Honeycomhe.' 89 

tess of Berci.' Side by side with these are the 
spurious sequels and stupid rejoinders which had 
grown up round the work of the greater men — 
the ' History of Tom Jones in his Married 
State,' ' Anti-Pamela,' the ' True Anti-Pamela,' 
and so forth. There is the ' Marriage Act' of 
Dr. John Shebbeare, which was prompted by 
Hogarth's ' Marriage ^-la-Mode : ' and though 
no more than two volumes of ' Tristram Shandy ' 
had made their appearance, there is already a 

* Life and Opinions of Miss Sukey Shandy, of 
Bow Street, Gentlewoman.' Of the numerous 
brood which may be said to have sprung from 
the Swift-(;Mm-Addison ' Adventures of a Shil- 
ling ' in the 'Tatler,' there are the first instal- 
ment of Charles Johnstone's recently-published 
roman d clef, the ' Adventures of a Guinea 
(Chrysal),' and the Rev. Francis Coventry's 

* Adventures of a Lap-Dog (Pompey the Little).' ^ 
There are Defoe's ' Colonel Jack ' and ' Roxana,' 
and there is the ' Stage-Coach ; ' there are the 
worthless and curious ' Memoirs of the Shake- 
speare's Head in Covent Garden,' and the 

1 Another roman h clef, in which Lady Mary Wortley 
Montagu, no mean judge, found ' a real and exact repre- 
sentation of life, as it is now acted [1751] in London ' — 
a statement to which the candid critic can only reply — 
' So much the worse for the life represented.' 



go Eighteenth Century Fignettes. 

equally curious and worthless Life (which those 
experts, the second-hand booksellers, sometimes 
describe as the origin of Sterne's masterpiece) 
of that ' broken-hearted soldier,' Corporal 
Ephraim Tristram Bates. There are Parson 
Dodd's ' Sisters,' and George Alexander Ste- 
vens's ' Tom Fool ; ' there is a second ' Amelia,' 
who (like Fielding's heroine) is also a ' dis- 
tressed Wife ; ' ^ there is the cryptic ' Widow of 
the Wood ; ' there are biographies of notorious 
personages, such as Buckhorse the boxer and 
Kitty Fisher. Finally, there are ^ Accomplished 
Rakes,' ' Men of Pleasure,' ' Fair Citizens,' 
and 'Fair Moralists' in sufficient numbers to 
turn the heads of all the Polly Honeycombes in 
the ' varsal world.' 

It is instructive to run down the list, and 
think how many of these masterpieces, once 
marked by the ' most observing thumbs ' of the 
Lady Slattern Loungers of their day, have now 
perished, — perished so hopelessly and irrecov- 
erably that, for a moment, one wonders whether 
some of the titles were not invented ad hoc. 

1 It was probably the story of the author, Elizabeth 
Justice, whose own married life had not been happy. She 
claims mention here because her ' Voyage to Russia, 
1739,' was printed at York by Thomas Gent, the subject 
of a later paper in this volume. 



* Polly HoneycomheJ 91 

The * Adventures of Jerry Buck,' ' Dick Haz- 
ard,' ' Jack Smart ; ' the Histories of ' Charlotte 
Villars,' 'Lucy Wellers,' ^ Sally Sable;' the 
' Memoirs of a Man of Quality,' ' A Coxcomb,' 

* An Oxford Scholar ; ' — had all these a real 
existence, or were they only stop-gap dummies 
concocted by Colman to swell his schedule ? 
Yet there need be little doubt upon this head. 
No one who has looked over a file of the 
'Public Ledger' or the 'London Chronicle' 
will be likely to deny that they had their being, 
or, at all events, that books very like them had 
their being, since notifications of similar per- 
formances are as common as those which pro- 
claim the virtues of Dr. James's Fever Powder 
or Dr. Hill's world-famed Essence of Water- 
Dock. Now and then, indeed, an odd volume, 

* with one cover loose,' turns up forlornly in the 
fourpenny box, or a packet of them (tied with 
listing) gathers dust in the window of some pro- 
vincial furniture shop, where they have arrived 
from the garrets of a ' gentleman's house in the 
country,' in company with a broken roasting- 
jack, a bell-mouthed blunderbuss, and a napless 
Kevenhuller hat. In that forgotten storehouse 
of eighteenth-century fiction, Harrison's ' Novel- 
ist's Magazine,' now desiderated solely for its 
graceful old ' coppers * after Thomas Stothard, 



92 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

two or three of the minor works mentioned by 
Colman are preserved, apparently because they 
were regarded as rather better than the rest. 
One of these is the ' Life and Adventures of Joe 
Thompson ; ' another, the ' History of Betsy 
Thoughtless.' They are, in all probability, fairly 
representative samples of the very second-rate 
literature to which the Demoiselles Lutestring 
devoted themselves in their Cheapside back- 
parlour, and they moreover exemplify the kind 
of work which was produced by the camp- 
followers of Fielding and Richardson. For 
these reasons, rather than for any particular 
value in their 'message,' — and certainly not 
from any desire to withdraw them from deserved 
oblivion, — it may be useful to give some brief 
account of them in this place. 

Of the author of ' Joe Thompson' not much 
is known beyond the facts that his name was 
Edward Kimber ; that (like Goldsmith's ' Ned 
Purdon ') he ' long was a bookseller's hack ; ' 
and that he finally quitted this world at fifty, 
worn out by drudgery and the compilation of 
Peerages. *Joe Thompson,' which seems to 
have been his solitary effort in fiction, was pub- 
lished anonymously in August, 17^0, two years 
and a half after the appearance of Smollett's 
* Roderick Random,' and about a year and a 



* Polly Honeycombe.'' 93 

half after the appearance of Fielding's ' Tom 
Jones.' Professing to be no more than the 
Editor of a true history, Mr. Kimber avails him- 
self unblushingly of the privilege (he would 
probably have cited the precedent of Richard- 
son) of praising his own work in his Preface. 
His author, he says, ' is all over new ; ' he has 
' followed the track of no former writer,' his 
' style and manner is peculiar to himself,' he has 
borrowed from no one but the poets, and his 
narrative is 'founded on fact.' If this be so, 
it is certainly a little unfortunate for the ' fact,' 
that it has an awkward knack of suggesting 
previous fiction. For instance, there is a fox- 
hunting baronet, Sir Walter Rich, whose func- 
tion is that of Fielding's Squire Western. Sir 
Walter has a daughter Louisa, whose function 
is that of Fielding's Sophia, and who is more- 
over destined, like Miss Western, to an un- 
worthy suitor. There is a Mr. Speculist, who 
discourses on the * moral fitness of things ; ' 
whose practice is lamentably at variance with 
his precept ; and who completes his likeness to 
Fielding's philosopher Square by repenting in 
his last illness. There are nocturnal misadven- 
tures at inns which recall ' Roderick Random ; ' 
there are ' Man of the Hill ' digressions which 
interrupt the story as in ' Tom Jones.' In one 



94 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

of these, the hero, Mr. Prim, escapes from a 
brutal captain at the island of Madagascar, living 
there like Selkirk and Crusoe, and after the 
manner of Philip Quarll, educating an ape to 
fetch and carry for him. Other recollections of 
the sort might be mentioned. For the rest, the 
book is certainly as claimed by its self-styled 
Editor, crowded with a variety of events. Of 
movement there is assuredly no lack ; and the 
scene shifts freely from the East Indies to Ver- 
sailles, from the town to the country, from 
Covent Garden to the Fleet Prison, of both of 
which last localities the author's knowledge, as 
might perhaps be anticipated, appears to have 
been ' extensive and peculiar.' Indeed, in spite 
of his proclaimed unwillingness to ^ shock the 
nicest ear, or kindle a blush even in the face of 
innocence herself,' it must be distinctly stated 
that several of Mr. Kimber's incidents, especially 
in his first volume, are laid in scenes, and enacted 
under conditions, only to be excused or endured 
in days when Hogarth's plain-speaking ' Pro- 
gresses ' formed the acceptable decoration of 
decent sitting-rooms. Upon the whole, how- 
ever, it is difficult to deny to ' Joe Thompson' 
a certain kaleidoscopic variety of invention, and 
even a certain jaded facility of style. Its radi- 
cal and irremediable defect is that — set in 



'Polly Honeycomhe,' 95 

motion as it must have been by the successes of 
Fielding and Smollett — especially Smollett — 
and perhaps of Defoe — it has been powerless, 
while reproducing and exaggerating much that 
is least admirable in those writers, to imitate 
their more distinctive features, their graphic 
vigour, their narrative impulse, their power of 
creating character, — most of all their genius. 
That its purpose is moral, we are expected to 
believe, since we are repeatedly told so ; and it 
is undeniable that, after the fashion of eighteenth- 
century ethics, it is indefatigable in punishing its 
evil-doers, and bringing its rogues to the gallows. 

* The fair of this happy land,' says the Editor 
complacently in the closing words of his Pre- 
face, * will rise improved from their reading, as 
well as the generous youth, who pants after in- 
struction.' Commending his work ' to the pe- 
rusal of all ranks of people,' he declares that 

* in families it should become a kind of Monitor, 
and in schools a Vade Mecum ; ' and it is his 
sincere and hearty prayer (he adds) ' that it may 
be as much admired by others, as it is by him- 
self [!], and may be of universal service to man- 
kind.' To achieve so complete a severance from 
one's work as to succeed in regarding it as the 
work of another person, is not often conceded 
even to the most deserving among writers. But 



9 6 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

it must have been granted in unstinted measure 
to the ingenious Author- Editor of the ' Life 
and Adventures of Joe Thompson.' 

If it be with Fielding and Smollett that we 
are to associate the labours of Mr. Edward 
Kimber, it is with Richardson and his congeners 
that we must class the author of the ' History of 
Miss Betsy Thoughtless.' The literary career 
of Mrs. Eliza Haywood (or Heywood) had 
been a singular one. Under the first George, 
she had been a follower of Mrs. Aphara Behn 
of ' Oroonoko,' and Mrs. Dela Riviere Manley 
of the original ' New Atalantis,' and it was to 
this latter chronique scandaleuse that her earlier 
successes, the ' Memoirs of a Certain Island* 
and the ' Secret History of the Court of Cara- 
mania ' were allied. Pope, whose anger she 
had aroused by these productions, put her into 
the ' Dunciad ' under conditions of unusual in- 
famy. But whether his indignation was right- 
eous or unrighteous, there seems to be no doubt 
that her efforts under George II. were charac- 
terized by qualities widely removed from those 
which had accompanied her entry into letters. 
* In the numerous volumes which she gave to 
the world towards the latter part of her life,' — 
says the ' Biographia Dramatica/ — ^ no author 
has appeared more the votary of virtue, nor are 



'Polly Honey comhe' 97 

there any novels in which a stricter purity, or a 
greater delicacy of sentiment, has been pre- 
served.' Even to this reassuring testimonial it 
is necessary to apply the precautionary rectifica- 
tion of • Autres temps, autres moeurs ; ' but as 
far as one is able to judge from contemporary 
records, the change in her style seems to have 
been the genuine result of altered standards. 
We learn from the authority already quoted that 
she was ' in more mature age, remarkable for 
the most rigid and scrupulous decorum, deli- 
cacy, and prudence, both with respect to her 
conduct and conversation.' A couple of the 
novels of her post-Richardsonian era are pre- 
served by Harrison — the Histories of 'Jemmy 
and Jenny Jessamy,' and of ' Betsy Thoughtless.' 
It is the former of these works which Scott, 
at the end of ' Old Mortality,' makes Miss 
Martha Buskbody describe as ' indeed pathos 
itself ; ' and seeing that Miss Buskbody's forty 
years' experience embraced the three circulating 
libraries of Gandercleugh and the two next 
market towns, her opinion is not one to be 
lightly set aside. To ' Betsy Thoughtless,' 
however, belongs, not only priority of produc- 
tion, but the real or reputed honour of (in Wal- 
pole's word) ' predecessing ' the ' Evelina ' of 
Miss Burney as an early example of the domestic 

7 



98 Eighteenth Century Fignettes, 

novel. Upon this latter ground alone, it deserves 
a pair of paragraphs. 

It was published by Gardiner in October, 
175 1, not many v^^eeks before the 'Amelia' of 
Fielding. Subject to the caveat which candid 
criticism must always prefix to eighteenth-century 
professions of purity, it seems to have been sin- 
cerely moral in its motive, though at the same 
time, rather more preoccupied in showing vice 
its own image than modern taste would deem 
desirable. The heroine is a young lady of many 
personal attractions, not fundamentally vicious, 
but vain, inquisitive, and exceedingly vivacious. 
Launched early as an orphan among those mul- 
tiplied perils which — in her day especially — 
were held to environ female honour, the quality 
of heedlessness to which she owes her surname, 
involves her in a network of dangers. Among 
many admirers she has one entirely eligible, 
named Trueworth. But he is alienated from 
her by a fallen schoolfellow, and an abandoned 
female friend. She is subsequently entrapped 
by a sham baronet into a mock marriage, from 
the consequences of which she is opportunely 
delivered by Trueworth, who, however, in the 
interim, has found consolation elsewhere. She 
subsequently marries Mr. Munden, a cross- 
grained hunks who is unfaithful to her, and she 



''Polly Honeycomhe' 99 

has to quit him, only returning to nurse him de- 
votedly in his final illness. Being thus left a 
widow, and, it may be added, considerably 
chastened by the severe discipline to which she 
has been subjected, she is free, at the end of a 
year, to crown her adventures by bestowing her 
hand upon the faithful Trueworth, who (having, 
on his part, conveniently become a widower) 
arrives to claim his '^trembling fair' in the regu- 
lation coach and six, not omitting that indispen- 
sable herald, ' a very neat running footman.' 
Such, divested of innumerable episodes, which 
serve to swell the narrative to the orthodox four 
pocket volumes ' in twelves,' is the history of 
' Betsy Thoughtless.' 

That its style is copious rather than concise 
will be gathered from its length. But it is easily 
and clearly written ; and the writer has wisely 
refrained from telling her tale in letters, though 
there are a good many of these scattered through 
the book. There is not much character drawing, 
nor dialogue, nor description. Indeed, in a 
work dealing largely with the lives of idle people 
in London, the absence of references to localities, 
except of the most casual kind, is very notice- 
ajDle. You may turn page after page without 
finding more than a chance mention of Rosa- 
mond's Pond or a stray reference to Cuper's 



loo Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

Gardens. Of passages relating to the writer's 
contemporaries, there are practically none save 
the following, directed at Fielding : — 

'There were no plays, no operas, no masquer- 
ades, no balls, no publick shews, except at the 
Little Theatre in the Hay Market, then known 

by the name of F g's scandal shop, because 

he frequently exhibited there certain drolls, or, 
more properly, invectives against the ministry ; 
in doing which it appears extremely probable 
that he had two views ; the one to get money, 
which he very much wanted, from such as de- 
lighted in low humour, and could not distinguish 
true satire from scurrility ; and the other, in the 
hope of having some post given him by those 
he had abused, in order to silence his dramatick 
talent. But it is not my business to point either 
the merit of that gentleman's performances, or 
the motives he had for writing them, as the town 
is perfectly acquainted both with his abilities 
and success ; and has since seen him, with as- 
tonishment, wriggle himself into favour, by pre- 
tending to cajole those he had not the power to 
intimidate.' 

The isolated irrelevance of this quotation 
seems to indicate some unexplained irritation on 
the part of its writer. But, as far as we are 
aware. Fielding, who mentions Mrs. Charlotte 



^ Polly Honeycombe.' loi 

Lenox, never once speaks of Mrs. Haywood, 
although, oddly enough, one of her earlier 
dramatic eiforts had been (with the aid of a 
Mr. Hatchett) to turn Fielding's ^Tragedy of 
Tragedies ' into an opera. 

' Polly Honeycombe,' as already stated in this 
paper, was first acted in December, 1760. But 
it is to be observed that its strictures on con- 
temporary fiction had been anticipated by Gold- 
smith some weeks earlier in one of the ' Chinese 
Letters ' that he was then contributing to the 
' Public Ledger.' After speaking of the ordi- 
nary run of ' romances ' — by which the text 
makes it clear he means * novels ' — as no better 
than ' instruments of debauchery,' Lien Chi 
Altangi goes on to make the following very per- 
tinent remarks on those — and they were by no 
means the majority — which professed [after the 
fashion of ' Joe Thompson ' and ' Betsy Thought- 
less'] to have a primary moral purpose. ' It is 
true ' — says he — ' the plot is commonly wound 
up by a marriage, concluded with the consent of 
parents, and adjusted by every ceremony pre- 
scribed by law. But as in the body of the 
work there are many passages that offend good 
morals, overthrow laudable customs, violate the 
laws, and destroy the duties most essential to 
society, virtue is thereby exposed to the most 



I02 Eighteenth Century Figmttes, 

dangerous attacks.' To the contention that the 
sole aim of the writers is ' to represent vice 
punished and virtue rewarded,' he replies, — 
'Granted. But will the greater number of 
readers take notice of these punishments and 
rewards ? Are not their minds carried to some- 
thing else ? Can it be imagined that the art 
with which the author inspires the love of virtue, 
can overcome that crowd of thoughts which 
sway them to licentiousness ? To be able to in- 
culcate virtue by so leaky a vehicle, the author 
must be a philosopher of the first rank.' These 
admirable and unanswerable sentiments, which 
are substantially in accordance with those ex- 
pressed by Goldsmith elsewhere, are said by him 
to be ' borrowed from a modern philosopher of 
China,' as translated in Du Halde. Yet not 
only have they been supposed, upon internal 
evidence, to be his own, but one of his editors 
has gone so far as to leave out the inverted 
commas which decorated them in the first edi- 
tions ; and it is certainly a curious coincidence 
that — as another editor remarks — the phrase 
' virtue rewarded ' should be the sub-title of 
Richardson's ' Pamela,' to which, in great 
measure, their ' animadversions ' apply. But it 
is more curious still that they are actually to be 
found, where no one seems to have searched for 



'Polly Honeycomhe.' 103 

them, namely, in Du Halde's great /o/io of 1735, 
at p. 169 of his third volume, being there stated 
to be taken from a version into French out of 
the original Chinese by the P^re Dentrecolles, 
a Jesuit Missionary to the Flovi^ery Land, who 
died at Pekin in the year 1741. 



THOS. GENT, PRINTER. 

A MONG the many mezzotints of that excel- 
'^■^ lent craftsman, Valentine Green, is one 
which, at first sight, might easily be mistaken for 
a copy of Mieris or Gerard Dou. It is the 
portrait, framed by the stonework embrasure 
familiar in Dutch and Flemish art, of a man be- 
tween seventy and eighty, whose abundant grey 
hair, unkempt as that of ' Maypole Hugh' in 
* Barnaby Rudge,' encroaches upon his cheeks 
and flows freely round his ruddy, vigorous, and 

— it must be owned — irascible Irish face. His 
well-worn coat — the dilapidations of which are 
reproduced by the artist with scrupulous fidelity 

— has a short cape, and deep sleeve-cuffs cover- 
ing the fore-arm ; he wears a double vest ; and 
he holds in his right hand a volume with unfolded 
frontispiece, entitled ' History of the Loyal 
Town of Rippon.' The picture, in short, is a 
representation by the York painter, Nathan 
Drake (father to Nathan Drake of the ' Essays'), 
of Thomas Gent, Printer and Citizen of London, 
York, and Dublin, once notable for his useful 



Thos. Gent, Printer. 105 

topographical publications, but now remem- 
bered, if at all, by the characteristic account of 
his early years which he drew up about 1746. 
Nothing definite, indeed, seems to have been 
known of his career until the discovery of this 
document by the Covent Garden bookseller, 
Thomas Thorpe, who printed it in 1832. In 
common with the somewhat analogous * Me- 
moir ' of Bewick the engraver, it appears to have 
been materially abridged by its editor, the Rev. 
Joseph Hunter ; and those who have inspected 
the original MS. which, until recently, was in 
the possession of a now-deceased collector, 
Mr. Edward Hailstone, of Walton Hall, affirm 
that much was omitted in addition to those 
initial pages of which (like the beginning of 
Prior's ' Alma ') Time had already taken tithe. 
What is left, nevertheless, not only, as Southey 
says in chap. cxiv. of his ^ Doctor,' ' contains 
much information relating to the state of the 
press in Gent's days, and the trade of literature,' 
but it also, in an old-fashioned, self-educated 
way, throws curious light upon a curious person- 
ality in times more favourable to unfettered 
originality than our own. These are character- 
istics which should justify some account of this 
now not-often-encountered record. 

It was ' in fair Hibernia ' that Thomas Gent 



io6 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

' first sucked in breath/ as he poetically puts it, 
being born in that country of English parents in 
the year 1693. At thirteen or thereabouts he 
was apprenticed to a Dublin printer named 
Powell, who seems to have possessed all the 
traditional disqualifications for appreciating an 
apprentice of parts. Consequently that appren- 
tice, following the precedent of all traditional 
apprentices in similar case, ran away, and at the 
third page of his mutilated memoirs, is discovered 
hiding in the hold of a ship bound for England, 
hopelessly sick, and having about fourteen pence 
in his pocket. When they arrived in the Dee 
(this was in August, 1710), the poor boy tremu- 
lously offered his waistcoat to the skipper in 
payment for his passage. But the captain, 
whose name was Wharton, being, by good luck, 
more like Captain Coram of the Foundling than 
those brutal ship-masters under whom Silas Told 
sailed out of Bristol City, not only addressed 
him as ' pretty lad,' and gave him excellent 
fatherly advice of the best copy-book kind, but 
in addition presented him with his blessing and 
sixpence. He was then landed, still faint and 
dizzy, at Parkgate ; and it may be noted, in 
passing, that it was in riding from this very 
Parkgate towards Chester, about three weeks 
later, that Jonathan Swift, Vicar of Laracor, 



Thos. Gent, Printer. 107 

Prebendary of Dunlavin in St. Patrick's Cathe- 
dral, and apparently an indifferent cavalier to 
boot, fell oif his horse. -^ From Parkgate Thomas 
Gent also set out for Chester, but on foot, his 
compagnons de voyage being a fat Englishwo- 
man, travelling with an anchor-smith, and another 
couple passing for man and wife. The party 
admired the ancient city of Chester, and the 
' celebrated river Dee,' where Gent's memory 
afterwards taught him to remember that ' the 
famous king Edgar was rowed by eight tributary 
kings ; ' but finding no work was to be had in 
that place, they pushed forward to London. At 
first Mr. Powell's runaway apprentice was 
called Mr. Tommy, ' by way of eminence.' 
His companions, however, soon discovered his 
penniless condition, and promptly degraded him 
to the rank of baggage-bearer in ordinary. 
Worse than this, they brought discredit upon 
him by their unsportsmanlike proceedings, for 
they knocked down a goose in a roadside pond, 
and then compelled him to wade for the body. 
* But,' comments Gent, grimly, ' these, my now 
crooked friends, got no good by their hungry 

1 ' I got a fall off my horse, riding here [Chester] from 
Parkgate, but no hurt ; the horse understanding falls very 
well, and lying quietly till I got up ' (' Journal to Stella/ 
2 September, 1710). 



io8 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

theft,' for when, at a convenient place, the goose 
was boiled, it was found to be ' almost as tough 
as parchment itself.' 

Journeying further southward, the travellers 
came up with a company of foot on their way to 
embark for Spain. (The year 1710, it will be 
remembered, was the year of that ' glorious dis- 
aster' of Brihuega, when Stanhope's eight bat- 
talions surrendered to Venddme.) The soldiers 
had a recruiting sergeant with them, and a lank- 
jawed officer upon a horse as lean as Rosinante. 
Gent's male companions were at once annexed 
by * Sergeant Kite,' but he himself, dropping his 
bundle without ado, beat a precipitate retreat. 
One of the new recruits, who had been himself 
entrapped, was speedily sent after him, and pity- 
ing his condition, opened a way of escape. 
' The officer,' he said, ' will ride up to you, as I 
depart on one side ; you may seem to agree 
with what he says, by bidding you live, as his 
men do, along with them ; but rise up early next 
morning, and make the best of your way from 
us.' Gent acted usefully and successfully on 
this timely counsel. The officer, however, over- 
took him next day ; but beyond warning him 
that, ' in spite of his teeth,' he would assuredly 
be pressed in London, made no further attempt 
to persuade him to trail a half-pike for Queen 



Thos. Gent, Print er* 109 

Anne. What became of the two women history 
sayeth not. Probably, like the lady in the 
' Jolly Beggars,' they followed their ' sodger 
laddies ' — at all events to the port of departure. 
Meanwhile Gent tramped on alone to St. Albans, 
where, faint and footsore, he halted ' at the sign 
of St. Catherine's Wheel.' Twopence consti- 
tuted his entire funds, but the landlord and his 
wife — and it says much for the boy's prepos- 
sessing appearance, or power of inspiring pity 
— gave him food and lodging for nothing. 

Here, unfortunately, there is a gap of a leaf 
in the manuscript. When it begins again Gent 
has found employment in that Parnassus of 
farthing poets, Pie Corner, with Edward Mid- 
winter, a printer of ballads and broadsheets. 
He has also recently renewed acquaintance with 
a former schoolfellow, named Levintz (the son 
of an Irish judge), who, having finished his 
studies at St. Paul's School, was at this time pre- 
paring to start upon a tour in the East. Before 
his departure, young Levintz, being ' tall, ex- 
ceedingly beautiful,' and of 'a fine address/ 
found it easy to persuade Madam Midwinter 
to give his friend an occasional holiday, when, 
' in many pleasant arbours,' at ' Islington, New- 
ington, Pancridge, and other towns' [!], he 
treated Gent to 'wine, cider, ale, and cakes,' 



iio Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

seasoned by suitable talk of their ' juvenile 
actions.' Then Levintz set out on his travels, 
and his companion saw him no more. With 
Midwinter, working often, through ' hurry with 
hawkers,' from five in the morning till twelve at 
night, and not without one or two skirmishes, 
arising out of what he describes in his queer 
language as the * authentic nonsense ' and ' un- 
reasonable contempt' of his fellow-servants, 
Gent remained till he was ' about twenty.' The 
date is more precisely fixed by the fact that one 
of his last duties was to take down the substance 
of the ' long, dull sermon ' (as Swift styles it to 
Stella) which on March 29, 1713, Dr. Henry 
Sacheverell preached at St. Saviour's, South- 
wark, after his three years' enforced silence. 
This very unauthorized version — since, accord- 
ing to Swift, the doctor had already himself sold 
the copyright of his discourse to a bookseller 
for;£ioo — kept Gent waiting patiently at the 
church for several hours before the service be- 
gan, but it brought in one week some ;£')0 gain 
to the Midwinter household. Shortly after- 
wards, and somewhat to his surprise, Gent was 
released from his 'prenticehood. Having thus 
got his liberty, he proceeded to lay out the soli- 
tary sixpence he possessed in purchasing a copy 
of Ayres's ' Arithmetic ' at a Moorfields book- 



Thos. Gent, Printer. m 

stain — a piece of extravagance which, for that 
day at least, obliged him, in his own phrase, ' to 
dine with Duke Humphrey.' But before sun- 
down he had found work in Fetter Lane with a 
Quaker widow called Bradford. Here, applying 
himself closely to his craft, he rapidly earned 
enough to set himself up with tools. ' I furnished 
myself,' he says, 'with a new composing iron, 
called a stick, because anciently that useful 
material [? implement] was made of wood ; a 
pair of scissors, to cut scale-boards [i. e., thin 
strips of wood for obtaining close register in 
printing] ; a sharp bodkin, to correct the letter ; 
and a pretty sliding box to contain them, and 
preserve all from rustiness. I bought also a 
galley [to hold type] for the pages I was to com- 
pose, with other appurtenances that might be of 
service to me when occasion should require.' 

With ' that knowing gentlewoman,' Mrs. 
Bradford, Gent might have remained happily. 
But being ' over fond of novelty, he was foolish 
enough to leave her service upon the invitation 
of a Blackfriars printer named Mears. Here 

1 According to Horace Walpole, the great library of 
James West, President of the Royal Society, which was 
sold at Langford's in March and April, 1773, was mainly 
* collected from stalls and Moorfields* (Letter to Cole, 
7 April, 1773). 



112 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

the ceremonious character of his admission 
seemed to augur exceptional advantages. Being 
first kindly permitted to pay the usual ' Ben- 
money ' (benvenue, or bienvenue-money, a tribute 
approximating very closely to the ' garnish ' of 
Lockit in the ' Beggar's Opera'), he was, in 
consideration thereof, initiated into the mysteri- 
ous rites of ' Cuzship.' The proceedings began 
by a solemn procession round the ^chapel,' a 
name which printing-rooms are said to derive 
from Caxton's first workshop in Westminster 
Abbey. This was accompanied by the perform- 
ance of an alphabetical anthem, ^ tuned literally 
to the vowels,' after which the kneeling neophite 
was stricken with a broadsword, ale was poured 
over him, and he was saluted by the titles of 
' Thomas Gent, baron of College Green, earl of 
Fingall, with power to the limits of Dublin bar, 
captain-general of the Teagues, near the Lake 
of Allen, and lord high admiral overall the bogs 
in Ireland ' — titles which at least exhibit a cer- 
tain ingenuity of nomenclature. But alas 1 for 
human grandeur, all this purchased dignity 
proved no more than the ' prologue to an egg 
and butter,' since a week or two later, not being 
yet a freeman, he was discharged as a ' foreigner.' 
Being justly ashamed, in the circumstances, to 
apply to his old mistress, he became a ' smouter,' 



Thos. Gent, Printer. 113 

or * grass-hand/ that is to say, he took odd jobs. 
This, upon the whole, proved more profitable 
than the promises of ' Cuzship,' and afforded 
him a tolerable subsistence. 

After some months of this desultory work, 
much of which must have been done for his old 
Smithfield employer. Midwinter, an offer came 
to Gent from John White, who — because he 
had printed the Declaration of William of Orange 
when it was refused by all the London presses 
— had in 1689 been made King's printer for the 
city of York and the five northern counties. 
White offered eighteen pounds a year, ' besides 
board, washing, and lodging ' — an offer which 
Gent accepted. Finding that it would cost him 
about five-and-twenty shillings to get to York 
by waggon, he set out, with the guinea allowed 
for his charges safe in his shoe-lining, to make 
the journey on foot. This he began on Tuesday, 
April 20, 1714. With a chance lift on a led- 
horse, and the usual delay from losing his road, 
he reached York on the following Sunday. Two 
coincidences signalized his arrival in ' ancient 
Ebor's city' — one being that his first inquiry 
for White was made at a house in Petergate, 
which afterwards became his own ; the other 
that White's door was opened to him by the 
* upper or head maiden ' of the establishment, 

8 



114 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

one Mistress Alice Guy, a young woman of 
' very good natural parts, quick understanding, 
a fine complexion, and very amiable in her 
features,' who afterwards — but not until she 
had first become a widow — bestowed her hand 
upon him. He narrates nothing of importance 
while in York save hearing the proclamation of 
King George I. from the steps of York Cathe- 
dral. In the dearth of printers, however — for 
at this time, except in London, they were few 
and far between — White's hands were always 
full, and his journeyman had prospered so much 
by the end of the year that he was able to pur- 
chase a watch and chain of ' Mr. Etherington, a 
Quaker, in High Ouse Gate,' for six guineas. 
In April, 171 5, from causes apparently connected 
with the indiscreet revelation by a compatriot 
of the fact that he had run away from his first 
master, he quitted White's service, and after re- 
lieving himself of the ' melancholy humour ' in- 
duced by this mishap in some very pedestrian 
verses, set out to visit his friends in Ireland. 
Already Mrs. White's ' head maiden ' must have 
regarded him with favour, for she presented him 
with a little dog as a road companion ; but, 
although there was a rival in the field, in the 
shape of his master's grandson, Gent's prudence 
seems to have overmastered his affections. 



Thos. Gent, Printer. 115 

Sea-voyages under the first Georges were 
wearisome affairs, and one remembers how it 
took Henry Fielding seven weeks to get from 
the Thames to the Tagus. Gent was only going 
from York to Dublin, but he was not at once to 
reach his destination. He started on May 15. 
Progressing modestly as what Mrs. Nosebag in 
* Waverley ' calls a ' foot-wobbler,' he made his 
way through Yorkshire and Lancashire to 
Liverpool. At Liverpool he would have halted 
had work offered. In default of this, he took 
ship in the ' Betty,' galley, Captain Briscoe, 
then waiting at Parkgate for a wind. Starting 
next day, the weather obliged them at nightfall 
to put into a creek near Holyhead. Here, un- 
happily, the captain took on board one Mr. 
Dubourdieu,^ a 'tall, swarthy, venerable, and 
pious ' clergyman of ' the Episcopal French 
church in the cathedral dedicated to St. Patrick, 
in Dublin.' This clerical addition to the pas- 
senger-list the crew considered to be of evil 

1 This was probably the Jean Armand Dubourdieu, 
whose sermons at the Savoy in 17 13, by their fierce de- 
nunciations of Louis XIV., provoked the remonstrances 
of the Duke d'Aumont, the French Ambassador, and led 
to the citation of the preacher by the Bishop of London. 
Dubourdieu is mentioned in Marteilhe's * Memoirs of a 
Protestant condemned to the Gallies of France for his 
Religion,' 1757. , 



ii6 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

omen ; and, as ill-luck would have it, a fearful 
storm that followed seemed to justify their fore- 
bodings. For some days the ' Betty' was beaten 
about by the waves, running at last for shelter to 
Douglas, Isle of Man. At Douglas they re- 
mained considerably more than a week, waiting 
for fair weather. Gent found lodgings on shore 
with a last-maker, who, ' besides, was very acute 
in making viols,' and he records that, until prices 
were raised by the arrival of other vessels in dis- 
tress, you could buy at Douglas ' a good pullet 
for fourpence, and a quart of strong brandy for 
an English shilling.' These advantages failed, 
however, to relieve his melancholy thoughts, 
which (he says) now ' inspired him with a sort 
of poetical genius to contemplate on the unsettled 
affairs of this transitory life.' How much this 
was promoted by his attendance at a sermon 
over a suicide and by a theological dispute with 
an infidel exciseman possessed of ' a sort of 
mathematical genius,' is unexplained ; but it 
does not seem to have been succeeded by the 
threatened metrical attack. At last the ' Betty ' 
set sail, and got safe to Dublin Harbour, to 
the delight of many besides Gentls father and 
mother, who had concluded her lost with all 
hands. He was, of course, warmly welcomed 
by the old people and by his numerous nephews 



\ 



Thos. Gent, Printer, 117 

and nieces. One of these latter, Anne Standish, 
he describes, not only as ' a perfect beauty,' but 
a very modest and pious young gentlewoman. 
' Often did we walk till late hours in the garden ; 
she could tell me almost every passage in " Cas- 
sandra," a celebrated romance that I had bought 
for her in London.' At this date it wanted four 
years to the publication of ' Robinson Crusoe ' 
(which Gent was hereafter to abridge), and 
twenty-five to ' Pamela.' Neither Defoe nor 
Richardson had yet dethroned the sempiternal 
Seigneur de la Calpren^de, whom Mistress 
Anne probably studied in that version of Sir 
Charles Cotterell afterwards illustrated by 
Hogarth. 

At Dublin, Gent would doubtless have settled, 
having engaged himself as journeyman to a 
printer in Copper Alley. But to this, unex- 
pected obstacles presented themselves from the 
action of his first master, Powell, who en- 
deavoured to repossess himself of the person of 
his runaway apprentice. As Powell proved in- 
tractable, Gent, philosophically reflecting that 
even ' the best of men had their troubles, nay, 
that King George himself just then, had an un- 
natural rebellion raised in his kingdom ' (an ob- 
vious reference to the first Jacobite rising), 
decided once more to flee his native country — 



ii8 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

a resolve in which he was possibly fortified by 
the receipt of ' a letter from his dearest, at 
York.' On July 8, 171 5, he left Ireland, and 
on the 1 2th reached Parkgate, whence, in a 
market boat ' mostly filled with a parcel of lovely 
damsels,' he made his way from Eastham Ferry 
to Liverpool. Again a chasm occurs in the man- 
uscript, which must be filled with a residence in 
York, where in January 1716 his master John 
White died, leaving his business to his widow 
and grandson, and forty shillings to his maid- 
servant, Alice Guy. In 1716 Gent was once more 
in London, working for Midwinter, and corre- 
sponding with his ' dear,' whom he had again 
been ill-judged enough to leave single, seeing 
that her other admirer was the very grandson, 
Charles Bourne, to whom White's business was 
to fall. In the following year he was made a 
Member of the Stationers' Company, and a free- 
man of the City. About the same time news 
came from Dublin that Powell had compounded 
his claims for ;^^ ; and thus his old apprentice 
became absolutely free. Joy, like grief, seems 
to have disposed Thomas Gent to ^drop into 
poetry,' and ' thinking of his kind usage in the 
Isle of Man,' he fell to versify the attractions of 
that favoured spot. One wonders if Mr. Hall 
Caine has ever met with this artless performance I 



Thos. Gent, Printer. 119 

* What/ writes the poet, concerning the Manx 
children — 

* What tho' they barefoot walk upon the sand, 
To save their shoes, — how pleasing is the strand ! * etc. 

Also he praises the cheapness of the provisions, 
and the absence of sectarianism : 

* No Papists here, or Presbyterians dwell 
Within your isle, as I am informed well/ 

Towards the close he apostrophises Lord 
Nairne, who, after his reprieve, had apparently 
been banished to the island for his share in the 
rebellion. Gent regards him as exceptionally 
fortunate in his place of exile : 

* Let him, then, bless King George. Nairne cannot crave 
What 's fit for man but he in Man may have : 

Doth he want liquor that is strong and stout } 
No better brandy in the world throughout : 
There good and wholesome beer and ale is found, 
There foreign products plenteously abound ; ' 

and so forth, the conclusion of the matter being 
that he may, for summum bonum, 

'Live near the bishop, in fam'd Castle Town, 
And, acting well, not value mortal's frown.' 

The ' Bishop ' was, of course, that worthy 
and pious Thomas Wilson, who fills so large a 



120 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

part in the story of the Manx Church, and whom 
Gent had actually seen presiding as judge at a 
visitation of the clergy. But he must have been 
' ill ' not ' well ' informed as to the Papists, since 
the good prelate's biographer, in speaking of 
his toleration, specially refers to them. ' The 
Papists who resided in the island loved and 
esteemed him, and not unfrequently attended 
his sermons and prayers.' 

Qualified to obtain employment, and equipped 
with a sweetheart, as Gent now was, it might 
be imagined that his aspirations would tend in 
the direction of wedlock. But though he ' en- 
tirely loved the young woman ' — Alice Guy to 
wit — he dreaded the responsibilities and ex- 
penses of the married state. He continued to 
labour unremittingly at his craft, taking little 
care for aught else, or he might (as he says), 
* on play nights, have seen Prince George and 
Princess Caroline visiting the theatre.' But 
his old ' over-fondness for novelty ' led him 
often to change his masters. From Midwinter 
he passed to Wilkins of Little Britain, who 
printed the ' Whitehall Evening Post ; ' from 
Wilkins again to John Watts, whose name fig- 
ures with that of Jacob Tonson on so many 
title-pages. Then in a fit of morbid despon- 
dency over his prospects, he practically broke 



Thos. Gent, Printer. 121 

off his engagement with Alice Guy, and set out, 
not without misgivings, to visit his parents in 
Dublin, renewing with Anne Standish, ' in the 
garden . . . near the Strand,' the old ' Cas- 
sandra ' talk ^ of history, travels, and the trans- 
actions of the most illustrious personages of both 
sexes.' ' Now and then,' he adds, when she 
would touch of their love, I believe, to know 
if I had ever felt its unerring dart, my dearest 
in England quickly recurred to my wandering 
thoughts, and filled my heart with such strong 
emotions, that my sudden sighs could not but 
reveal my inward trouble, which did not pass by 
unobserved, though I strove to hide them.' He 
was, however, soon back again in London, 
where, after a short interval with Watts, he cast 
in his fortunes with one Francis Clifton, a 
Roman Catholic who had been educated at 
Oxford. Much of Clifton's work was done for 
members of his unpopular faith, who ' financed ' 
him ; but he was always in difficulties, and al- 
ways in fear of the ' shoulder-dabbers.' Event- 
ually, both he and his staff, Gent included, 
moved into the sheltering Liberties of the Fleet, 
where they were at least relieved from appre- 
hension.^ They must, however, have been but 

^ The ' Rules ' or * Liberties ' of the Fleet — it should 
perhaps be explained — were certain well-defined limits 



122 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

poorly accommodated, since, by Gent's account, 
their only printing-room, in all weathers, was 
often nothing better than a mean shed adjoining 
the prison wall, where rain and snow fell in turn 
upon the cases. But Clifton contrived to pay 
his men ; and brisk trade, the encouragement of 
the * wide-mouthed stentorian hawkers,' and the 
occasional solace of ' a glass of good ale,' made 
life endurable. Now and then came commis- 
sions of a mysterious kind. Once Gent and his 
master were ordered to carry the worked-off 
sheets of a pamphlet to ' a large sort of monastic 
building' in Westminster, where they were 
visited in a spacious chamber by ' a grave gentle- 
man in a black lay habit,' who chatted pleasantly, 
treated them to a bottle of wine^ and then po- 
litely but plainly enjoined the strictest secrecy. 
Neither master nor man knew the name of his 
employer. But not very long afterwards, in the 

within which prisoners for debt were allowed to reside ; 
and it seems that they also afforded an asylum to others 
who, not being prisoners, were in fear of arrest. Richard 
Savage is a case in point. Pending his abortive retire- 
ment, in later life, to the ' Calm of a Cottage,' his friends 
' directed him to take a lodging in the Liberties of the 
Fleet, that he might be secure from his Creditors, and sent 
him every Monday a Guinea,' which, it is added, ' he com- 
monly spent before the next Morning ' (* Life ' [by John- 
son], 1744, P- 146). 



Thos. Gent, Printer. 123 

drawn features of a State prisoner going in a 
guarded coach to the Tower, the obscure 
' smouter' of the Fleet recognized his courteous 
and hospitable entertainer, and learned that he 
was none other than that finished gentleman and 
factious politician, Francis Atterbury, Bishop of 
Rochester. 

But business with Jacobite prelates, who were 
friends of Bolingbroke and Swift, was a hazard- 
ous distinction even in an already sufficiently 
hazardous calling. Almost the next thing which 
Gent records is the trial at the Old Bailey of a 
mere boy named John Matthews, who, having 
been convicted of printing a seditious libel in 
favour of the Pretender, entitled ' Vox Populi, 
Vox Dei,' was drawn on a sledge from Newgate 
to Tyburn, and executed. ' I beheld him,' says 
Gent, ' as I stood near St. Sepulchre's Church ; 
his clothes were exceeding neat, the lining of 
his coat a rich Persian silk, and every other 
thing as befitted a gentleman. I was told he 
talked, like a philosopher, of death, to some 
young ladies who came to take their farewell, 
and suffered with a perfect resignation.' This 
was in November, 17 19. Little more than a 
year later, Gent himself had a narrow escape of 
quitting this world by ' the steps and the string' 
— otherwise the gallows. He was suddenly 



124 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

arrested by a king's messenger on suspicion of 
treasonable printing, and with several others 
hurried into hold at Manchester Court (Cannon 
Row, Westminster), then used for the tempo- 
rary confinement of political prisoners. Fortu- 
nately, nothing could be proved against him, 
and he was honourably discharged. At this 
date he had left Clifton and gone back to Mid- 
winter. In a small way he was prospering. 
He had acquired some experience as a reporter 
of assize trials ; he had saved a little money, 
and bought some furniture and some fonts of 
type. When he was released from prison, he 
set up a press of his own near the Two Fight- 
ing Cocks in Fleet Lane (still, it would 
seem, within the * sweet security ' of the Liber- 
ties), and began to think once more of his 
York sweetheart. But ' he that wills not when 
he may ' runs risks. Almost simultaneously 
with the first definite beams of better fortune 
came tidings that Alice Guy had become Alice 
Bourne. As of old, Gent sought solace in 
song, producing, to the popular tune of ' Such 
Charms has Phillis,' etc., a lengthy ballad, 
' proper for the flute,' upon which instrument he 
was a performer. This effusion, in which he 
posed — rather unfairly, looking to the circum- 
stances — as a ' forsaken ' lover, he presented 



Thos. Gent, Printer. 125 

to Mr. Dodd, a master printer, who sold thou- 
sands of it in broadsheet form. But Gent, with 
a nicer sense of fitness than he had exhibited in 
the composition of the verses, though he was 
not averse from the gift of ' a glass of comfort or 
so,' declined to receive any money payment for 
his ' melodious tear.' 

It was in June, 1721, that Alice Guy was 
married, and her half-hearted admirer was con- 
sequently still under thirty. His ballad for the 
flute was not his first appearance as a printed 
author, since, two years before, Clifton had 
issued for him a Hudibrastic poem, entitled 
* Teague's Ramble,' in which he satirized some 
of his craft ' who had used him unkindly.' For 
Midwinter he abridged, in 1722, the three parts 
of the then recent * Robinson Crusoe,' adorning 
the same with thirty rude wood-cuts in the text, 
designed by himself. Besides this, from his 
Fleet Lane press he put forth ballads and broad- 
sides on his own account. He also issued a 
collection of songs ' for the Summer's Entertain- 
ment,' a treatise on ' Preparation for Death,' 
and a book of Emblems based on Quarles and 
the * Pia Desideria' of Herman Hugo. More- 
over, the better to justify the title of ' High 
Flyer' given to him by malicious rivals., he struck 
off for an old school-fellow a Latin Ode on the 



126 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

Return of King George the First from Germany, 
with all the ceremony of an orthodox imprint : 
Londini, typis Thomce Gent, in vico vulgo dicto 
Fleet-lane, pro usu Authoris, ann. 1724. But 
the bulk of his business lay in cockpit bills, and 
such ' Last Dying Speeches ' as one meets with 
in Hogarth's prints. One of these was that of 
a certain Counsellor Christopher Layer, who 
was executed for high treason. This, which 
Gent expanded from a few words into a hand- 
some valedictory oration, had such a run that, for 
about three days, the ' wide-mouthed stentorian 
hawkers ' were ready to pull his press to pieces 
in their eagerness for copies. At such times as 
he could not get enough work for himself he 
jobbed for others — for the first of the Wood- 
falls, and for the yet undistinguished Samuel 
Richardson, of Salisbury Court, then engaged 
with Woodfall in printing a polyglot Dictionary. 
"With one of his temporary employers, the new- 
made widow of the Dodd above mentioned, it 
seems probable that he might have entered into 
a double partnership, when suddenly news ar- 
rived that, by the death of her husband, his old 
sweetheart was free. Upon this occasion Gent 
took time by the forelock. He saw plainly that 
he must ' not trifle with a widow as he had for- 
merly done with a maid,' and, making such ex- 



Thos. Gent, Printer* 127 

cuses as occurred to him, he set off without 
delay, not on foot as of old, but by the stage 
which started from the Black Swan in Holborn, 
and carried him to York in four days. Here he 
found his 'dear' once more, though much al- 
tered. ' There was no need for new courtship ; 
but decency suspended the ceremony of marriage 
for some time ' — to be exact, for a little over 
three months. They were married at York 
Minster on December 10, 1724. 

With his marriage Gent brings to a close 
Part I. of his ' Life,' and accomplishes about 
three-fourths of his book (as we have it). Like 
most of its class, and here again it resembles 
that ' Memoir ' of Bewick to which it has already 
been compared, the concluding part is the least 
fruitful in incident and interest. To all appear- 
ance his fortune was made. He had married 
the woman of his choice, and, what was more, 
had married a business as well. Where he had 
been a servant, he was now a master. But these 
advantages were not without their drawbacks, 
for something of freshness departs from a hap- 
piness too long deferred by prudence. His 
wife, he found, had lost her old amiability of 
disposition, and his own temper had never been 
good. There was war with his wife's uncle, a 
printer at Newcastle, who not only brought out 



128 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

a ' York Courant ' in opposition to Gent's ' York 
Journal,' but set up a rival press as well in York 
itself. Other presses followed in the vicinity, 
and the once prosperous business established by 
White, and inherited by Bourne, began per- 
ceptibly to decline. All this tended to embarrass 
Gent, to embroil him with those about him, and 
to salt the second portion of his record with a 
good many doleful ejaculations and vindictive 
utterances. Nevertheless, for more than forty 
years he continued to print and to produce, and 
it is to this period of his life that his most mem- 
orable work belongs. The long list of the books 
he issued may be read, to the profit of the in- 
quirer, in such official records as Davies' ' Me- 
moir of the York Press.' Of those with which 
he is directly associated as author or compiler, 
his topographical efforts are the best. These, 
which he commenced in order to supplement his 
failing business, were heralded in 1730 by the 
little octavo entitled the ' Antient and Modern 
History of the Famous City of York.' He fol- 
lowed up this in 1733 by the 'Antient and 
Modern History of the Loyal Townof Rippon,' 
and to this again succeeded, two years later, 
the ' History of the Royal and Beautiful Town 
of Kingston-upon-Hull.' That these volumes 
make no pretence to compete with the copious, 



Tbos* Gent, Printer. 129 

copper-plated folios of the Drakes and Thoresbys 
of their writer's day, need scarcely be said. 
The type deserves that stigma of ' scurvy letter' 
once applied to Steele's ' Tatler ; ' the style is 
poor and prolix; the 'portraitures and views' 
are (as the author confesses) sadly wanting in 
' the prospective.' But he had many qualifica- 
tions for his task. He was interested himself, 
and he tried to interest his reader ; he made per- 
sonal inquiries wherever he could ; he risked 
his neck in the investigation of stained glass, 
and \\Q was indefatigable in copying out epitaphs 
and inscriptions. This last of itself is almost 
enough to give his work an independent value. 
Occasionally he had collaborators. The ' History 
of Rippon,' for example, is introduced by a poem 
on the ' surprising Beauties of Studley Park,' 
by Mr. Peter Aram, a gardener. The verses 
are less remarkable than the fact that this was 
the father of Hood's hero, who, as ' Mr. Euge- 
nius Aram,' figures in the ' List of Subscribers.' 
And here, by the way, it may be noted that, 
under the year 1741, the ^Memoir' contains a 
brief reference to another well-known person, 
the new Prebendary of York, Mr. Laurence 
Sterne, who succeeded one of Gent's patrons, 
the Rev. Robert Hitch. Gent may, indeed, 
have witnessed Sterne's marriage in the cathe- 

9 



130 Eighteenth Century Fignettes, 

dral on the preceding Easter Monday. But it 
is, perhaps, more curious still, in this connec- 
tion, that one of the earliest of the pamphlets 
which Gent printed was dedicated to Daniel 
Draper, Esq., afterwards a Bombay Counsellor, 
and the husband of the ' Bramine ' of that curi- 
ous sentimental Journal by ' Mr. Yorick,' the 
original MS. of which is now to be inspected at 
the British Museum. 

In a rude copperplate prefixed to some of his 
works, Gent is shown sitting in his printing- 
room in Petergate, a gray-haired old man, with 
a flageolet at his side, a music-book on his 
knees, and a fiddle and bow upon the wall. 
' Having but too much time to spare, rather than 
be indolent, I studied music on the harp, flute, 
and other instruments,' he writes in 1737. Over 
his head, on a shelf surmounting a row of un- 
named smaller volumes, are the three books 
mentioned above, together with three others, to 
which, from their prominence, it must be as- 
sumed that he attached a special importance. 
They are the Histories of England and Rome, 
both issued in 1741, and the ' Most Delectable, 
Scriptural, and Pious History of the famous and 
magnificent Great Eastern Window in St. Peter's 
Cathedral, York, 1762 ' — the last-named, which 
is copiously (and deplorably) illustrated by 



Thos. Genty Printer. 131 

' wooden cuts of his own,' being long delayed in 
its production by the author's want of means. 
His fortunes were already steadily on the wane 
when he concluded his ' Memoir ' in 1746. But 
they must have got worse in the years that re- 
mained, for in February, 1761, while the ' Great 
Eastern Window ' was still at press, he was re- 
duced to speak a Prologue and Epilogue to a 
representation, for his benefit, by puppets or 
fantoccini, of Rowe's tragedy of 'Jane Shore.' 
This * pathetick Prologue ' and ' benedictive 
Epilogue of Thanks ' he subsequently published 
with the characteristic title of ' The Contingen- 
cies, Vicissitudes, or Changes of this transitory 
Life.' 'Strange,' the Prologue begins — 

* Strange, that a Printer, near worn out thro' Age, 
Should be impell'd, so late, to mount the Stage ! 
In silver'd Hairs, with Heart nigh fit to break, 
Thus to amuse, who scarce has Words to speak. . . . 

Yet when we ponder on Event of Things, 
How vary'd Fortune changes mighty Kings ; 
How rebel Traytors cause most sad Disasters ; 
Like treach'rous Servants to ingenuous Masters I 
How cruel Combats alter pow'rful States ; 
And Wealth or Want proceed from dire Debates ; 
How numerous Interceptors, fierce, invade 
Each deep-learn'd Science ; ev'ry Art or Trade : 
'T will be no Myst'ry I descend so low 
Here to harangue before a Puppet Show.' 



132 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

And it goes on at some length to dwell feelingly 
on his misfortunes and his forlorn position. Be- 
tween the delivery of these two addresses and 
their appearance in type, he had further evidence 
of life's vicissitudes, for his wife died, an event 
which he records in his own peculiar way. ' It 
was,' he says, ' on Wednes., April i, 1761, N.S. 
between the Hours of x. and xi. in the Night, 
that my beloved Dear, Mrs. Alice Gent, 
meekly resigned up her precious Soul (that 
curious and unsearchable Particle of Divinity) 
to its Maker ; leaving me in a disconsolate 
Condition.' He survived her for seventeen 
years ; — it is to be feared in extreme indigence, 
and often subsisting upon what one account 
calls ' eleemosynary offers of meat and drink,' 
He might early have had parochial relief, but he 
clung tenaciously to his old books, his scanty 
belongings, and his Petergate house, where, in 
May 1778, he died, aged eighty-six. In his will 
he desired to be buried near the remains of his 
* Dear ' at St. Olave, Mary-gate. But the ex- 
ecutor renounced his office ; and Thomas Gent 
was laid in the parish church of St. Michael-le- 
Belfrey, ' where,' adds Davies, 'more than fifty 
years before, he and his wife had wept together 
over the grave of their infant and only child.' 



THE ADVENTURES OF FIVE DAYS. 

1\ MORALISING, in his masterpiece, over that 
-^'^ ' square old yellow Book' he bought on 
the palace-step at Florence, a distinguished 
poet not long gone from us touches something 
of the unspeakable delight of the true student 
in presence of a genuine 'document' — an 
authentic and unimpeachable record — 

' . . . pure crude fact 
Secreted from man's life when hearts beat hard, 
And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since.' 

Yet there are things more close to truth than 
even the sworn testimony in Robert Browning's 
' Roman murder-case,' which, after all, was 
mainly printed matter. An actual manuscript 
from the pen of a person in the drama — still 
more a manuscript pictorially interpreted by 
others of the company — this, one would think, 
should bring us into relations far more intimate 
than any disposition, however typographically 
artful, of * italics ' or ' Caps and smalls.' Such a 
relic survives to-day in the Print Room of the 



134 Eighteenth Century Fignettes. 

British Museum. It is an oblong book in 
brown ink, of which the title runs as follows : 
— An Account/ of what Seem'd most Remark- 
able in the Five Days Peregrination/ of the 
Five Following Persons viz^ Messieurs/ Tot- 
hall, Scott, Hogarth, Thornhill & Forrest./ 
Begun on Saturday May the 27*^ 1732/ and 
Finish'd/ On the 3 1'' of the same Month./ Ahi 
tu et fac Similiter. — Inscripton (sic) on Dul- 
wich Colledge porch.' The ' peregrination ' 
was from London to the Island of Sheppey ; and 
the pilgrims were William Hogarth, the painter 
(whose prints of ' A Harlot's Progress ' had 
just been issued to their subscribers) ; John 
Thornhill, his brother-in-law ; the English 
Canaletto, Samuel Scott ; a much-experienced 
draper of Tavistock Street, by name William 
Tothall, who had been a seaman and a prisoner 
in Spain ; and an attorney called Ebenezer For- 
rest, father of the Theodosius Forrest who 
afterwards fitted a cantata to Hogarth's patriotic 
print of ' Calais Gate.' It was a hastily impro- 
vised expedition, concerning which Forrest, as 
historiographer, drew up the circumstantial 
record described above. Its spirit is a little 
that of Goldsmith's later journey to Kentish 
Town in the ' Citizen of the World,' and Field- 
ing's ' Letter from a French Gentleman to his 



The Adventures of Five Days. 135 

Friend at Paris.' Like them, it is, professedly, 

* a burlesque upon historical writers recording 
a series of insignificant events ; ' but at the 
same time it gives so unvarnished an idea of 
old-world middle-class merriment that, albeit 
the merriment in question is rather of the 

* rough-and-tumble ' order, it is worth while for 
a moment to linger over its pages. If, in com- 
mon with most chronicles of the day, it has its 
coarse passages, they need not concern us 
here. 

It was midnight when, to the favourite tune 
of ' Why should we quarrel for Riches ? ' — a 
ditty doubtless included in the collection of Mr. 
Richard Leveridge of Tavistock Street, for 
which a year or two earlier Hogarth had de- 
signed a frontispiece — the party sallied forth 
from the Bedford Arms Tavern under the Little 
Piazza in Covent Garden.^ The economical 
equipment of each of the travellers consisted of 
a single spare shirt, stowed commodiously in 
the deep-flapped pocket of the period. They 
probably took a wherry from Somerset-Stairs, 
— ' the first Land they made ' being the notori- 
ous night-cellar in Thames-Street by Billings- 

^ Not to be confused with the more famous Bedford 
Coffee-house in the opposite corner. (See * The Tour of 
Covent Garden,' in this volume.) 



136 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

gate, known as the ' Dark House,' a resort, 
according to the facetious Ned Ward, much 
affected of fish-fags and riverside folk in general. 
Here, says the record, ' Hogarth made a Char- 
acateur of a Porter who CalFd himself the Duke 
of Puddle Dock,^ The Drawing was (by his 
Grace) pasted on the Cellar Door.' As the 
clock struck one, having wisely chartered just 
such a straw-strewn boat, with blue tilt stretched 
over the bails, as Gay mentions in his ' Trivia,'^ 
— for Charles Lamb's ' hoy ' had not yet at- 
tained its full popularity, — they set sail for 
Gravesend, experiencing (according to the log) 
* much Rain and No Sleep for about Three 
Hours.' ' At Cuckolds Point [which, even 
then, had doubtless its gibbet and pendent 
malefactor^] Wee Sung St. John, at Deptford 

1 Puddle dock or wharf, familiar to Butler and Ben 
Jonson and Shakespeare (the last of whom had a house 
hard by, which he left by will to his daughter Susannah), 
is a turning out of Upper Thames Street. Swift refers 
to it ('Polite Conversation/ 1738, p. 55). So also does 
Mr. Cambridge of Twickenham (' World/ No. 51). 

^ ' The rowing crew, 

To tempt a fare, clothe all their tilts in blue.' 

Trivia, i. 163. 

^ See Plate v. of Hogarth's * Industry and Idleness/ 
The banks of the river opposite Blackwall and Gravesend 
were dotted with these sinister objects ; and at waterside 



The Adventures of Five Days. 137 

Pishoken and in Blackwall Reach Eat Hung 
Beef and Biscuit and Drank Right [that is, 
neat] Hollands. At Poorfleet wee had a View 
of the Gibralter the Dursley Galley and Tartar 
Pink men of war, from the last of which wee 
took on Board the pilot who Brought her up 
the Channell, he Entertain'd us with a Lieuten- 
ants acco* of an Insult offered him by the Span- 
iards and other Affairs of Consequence which 
naturally made us Drowsy and then Hogarth 
fell asleep. But soon awaking, was going to 
relate a Dream he had, but falling asleep again 
when he awak'd had forgott he had Dream'd 
at all.' 

On Sunday morning about six they arrived at 
Gravesend, and having had their wigs powdered 
at Mrs. Bramble's hostelry, set out, after coffee 
and buttered toast, for Rochester. They took 
a view en route of the * New Church ' (probably 
the parish Church of St. George, burned down 
in the great fire of 1727 and then just re-built or 
re-building), * the unknown person's Tomb and 
Epitaph [?], and the Markett Place.' They 
must have passed by the cherry orchards of 
Gad's Hill where the * wild Prince ' robbed 

taverns * perspective glasses ' were thoughtfully supplied to 
those who desired 'to enjoy the spectacle' (Hartshorne's 
* Hanging in Chains,' 1891, p. 75). 



138 Eighteenth Century yignettes. 

* fat Jack,' and where later lived the author of 
' Edwin Drood.' At Rochester, which they 
reached at ten, they inspected the Bridge, the 
Cathedral of St. Andrew and the Castle, then 
less ruinous than now. In the latter they 
watched a little boy go down the well in the 
middle wall ' by [Small Holes Cut in the Sides 
wherein he plac'd his hands and Feet and soon 
return'd Safe bringing up with him a Young 
Daw he had taken out of a Nest there.' Tra- 
versing the High Street, they came, on the 
north side upon Richard Watts his Hospital 
' for Releif of Six Travelling Persons by Enter- 
taining them with one Night's Lodging and 
giving to each fourpence in the Morning, pro- 
vided they are not Persons Contagiously Dis- 
eased, Rogues or proctors' [i.e., itinerant 
priests].^ This quaint and ancient charity, it 
will be remembered, Dickens, not without com- 
ments on its defective modern administration, 
made the scene of the Christmas Number of 
' Household Words' for 1854, and the pretext 

1 By an Act of the 22nd year of Henry VIII., cap. 12 
[i53o]> all proctors or pardoners, going about without 
sufficient authority, were to be treated as vagabonds. A 
' pardoner * or seller of indulgences — it will be remem- 
bered — with wallet * bret-ful of pardoun come from Rome 
al hoot,' is numbered among Chaucer's famous pilgrims. 



The Adventures of Five Days, 139 

for his own excellent history of Private Richard 
Doubledick. 

At one they dined at the still-existent, but 
much modified, Crown Inn, a respectable hos- 
telry then more than four centuries old. Here is 
the bill of fare for five : — Soles and flounders 
with crab sauce ; calf's head stuffed and roasted, 
with the liver fried and the appurtenances 
minced ; roast leg of mutton and green peas ; 
beverages, small beer and port. It says much 
for the unimpaired digestions of Hogarth and 
Scott that they subsequently played hop-scotch 
in the Colonnade under the red-brick Town Hall, 
and that they were shortly afterwards ready 
for shrimps at Chatham, to which place they 
next adjourned. At Chatham, where they vis- 
ited the dockyard, and went on board the 
' Marlborough ' and the ' Royal Sovereign,' 
they saw the ' Royal George,' a predecessor 
of that ill-fated vessel of which Cowper sang 
the elegy, and the ' Royal Anne ' which Field- 
ing mentions in the ^Journal of a Voyage to 
Lisbon.' ^ 

1 The * Royal Sovereign ' and the ' Royal Anne,* both 
built by William Lee, were then two of the largest ships 
in the Navy. The former was 1,882 tons, with no guns 
and 850 men; the latter, 1,721 tons, with 780 men and 
100 guns. 



I40 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

On the following day they crossed by Strood 
through the fields to Frindsbury, where a list 
of benefactions in the church which, despite the 
usual ' Witness our hands,' was subscribed by 
the Vicar alone, appears, in the absence of 
other objects of interest, to have greatly ex- 
cited them. From Frindsbury they went on to 
Upnor, where Hogarth drew the Castle and 
Scott the shipping. The whole party, with the 
diminutive figure of Hogarth conspicuous among 
them, appear in the foreground of the joint pict- 
ure. They dined hurriedly at ' The Smack ' 
Inn in the ten-gun battery, after which their ex- 
uberant animal spirits found vent in a battle 
royal and a good deal of horse play. Their 
next halting-place was Hoo. Here their ad- 
miration was divided between an epitaph, more 
emotional than coherent, placed by a grateful 
servant maid upon the tomb of her master in 
Hoo Churchyard, and an attractive widow-land- 
lady who had buried four husbands. Scott, 
who was apparently the butt of the party, then 
enlivened them, ' by attempting to prove, a Man 
might go over but not through the World and 
for Example pointed to the Earth and ask'd 
them to go thro' that Element.' 

In revenge for this outrageous pleasantry, 
they subsequently devoted themselves to the 



The Adventures of Five Days. 141 

pastime of secretly filling his pockets with 
stones, a procedure which in the issue proved 
impolitic, as it only had the effect of supplying 
him with ammunition for the combats for which 
at this time their souls seem to have thirsted. 
North Street, where a well aiforded opportunity 
for cooling their courage by a water engage- 
ment and Stoke, which rejoiced in a remarkable 
and highly original ^ arrangement ' in weather- 
cocks, were next traversed, and they finally put 
up in the latter place at the Nag's Head. Here 
they found ' but Three Beds and no Night 
Caps.' Upon the complications thus created 
followed a good deal of further fun, such as 
bolstering, 'fighting perukes' (?) and so forth. 
At six next morning arrived a fisherman in boots 
and shock hair, who shaved them and ' flowered ' 
their wigs, which, after the severe discipline of 
the night before, must have stood in urgent 
need of renovation. Hogarth made a rapid 
sketch of this scene ; and the old roughly- 
washed drawing still shows us what he saw in 
the low-ceiled, lattice-windowed, brick-floored 
room — the fisherman in his shirt sleeves taking 
Thornhill gingerly by the nose ; Forrest at 
breakfast in a red coat, with a handkerchief 
bound about his bare poll ; Scott drawing at 
the table ; Tothall, a portly personage, scraping 



142 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

his chin at a little mirror on the wall, and Ho- 
garth himself busily engaged with his pencil (or 
rather quill) in the corner. Milk and toast 
were then the order of the day, and they started 
for Sheerness. 

After all but losing their way in the Stoke 
Marshes they entered the Isle of Graine, making 
instinctively for Goody Hubbard's Chequers' 
Alehouse. No ferryman could be persuaded to 
carry them across the Medway to Sheerness ; 
but at last they engaged a ship's yawl, embark- 
ing with some difficulty. (From Hogarth's 
sketch they had to crawl on their hands and 
knees along two oars laid between the shore 
and the boat.) At twelve they landed at Sheer- 
ness, visited the fort (where Scott excited much 
derisive hilarity by smelling the touch-holes of 
the recently discharged ordnance), and then 
walked along the beach to Queenborough. 
Here the traditional smallness of the town, with 
its one street, its minute clockhouse, and its 
* plentiful lack ' of provisions,^ impressed them 
almost as much as the fact that the principal inn, 
which had for its sign a Red Lion, was never- 

1 Matthew Green, in his * Spleen,' puts ' a Queen- 
b'rough mayor behind his mace ' among the legitimate 
incentives to laughter. The tiny town seems to have 
been a long-standing object of satire. 



The Adventures of Five Days, 143 

theless called the * Swans.' In the church they 
found an epitaph on one Henry Knight, an old 
whaling captain and ' Harpooneer : ' 

' In Greenland I Whales Sea-horse Bears did Slay 
Though Now my Body is Intombe in Clay : * 

and in the churchyard the Gravedigger, who, 
tongue-loosed by two pots of ale, informed them 
among other things, that the Mayor was ' a 
Customhouse Officer,' and the parson, * a Sad 
Dog ' — phrases which the speaker probably 
regarded as synonymous. On the hill behind 
the town they forgathered with a boat's crew 
from the ' Rose ' man-of-war, who, having been 
told off to carry one of the midshipmen on 
shore, had been left by their inconsiderate com- 
manding officer without money or food, a few 
cockles excepted, a moving and Smollett-like 
incident which immediately excited the charity 
of the Pilgrims. ' Wee gave the Fellows Six- 
pence who were Very thankfull, and Run 
towards the Town to buy Victualls for them- 
selves & their Companions who lay asleep at 
some distance ; Wee going to View their Boat 
that stuck fast in the Mud One of the Sailors 
return'd hastily and kindly offer'd us some 
Cockles, This seem'd an Act of so much Grat- 
itude that wee follow'd the Fellows into the 



144 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

Town and gave them another Sixpence and they 
fetched their Companions and all refresh'd them- 
selves and were Very thankfuU and Merry.' 
The last words almost read like an extract from 
Pepys. At Queenborough a chair was brought 
into the street for Hogarth to sketch the little 
Town House, an operation which soon had the 
effect of attracting as art-critics a larger popula- 
tion than had been suspected, including ' Sev- 
erall pretty Women.' Nothing else of much 
note occurred here. The missing officer of the 
* Rose ' having returned, fresh difficulties en- 
sued owing to his cavalier behaviour to a mar- 
ried lady of the neighbourhood ; the friends were 
out-chirrupped at the inn by some Harwich lob- 
ster men, whose admirable sea-songs threw their 
own humbler efforts of St. John and Pishoken 
entirely into the background, and the usual 
misunderstanding arose with the Pantaloon of 
the party, Scott, in regard to his bed. 

Quitting Queenborough at ten, they mounted 
to the little village of Minster, the highest part 
of the island of Sheppey. Here, in the ancient 
abbey church of SS. Mary and Sexburga, Scott 
made a sketch of the tomb of a Spanish ambas- 
sador, and Hogarth drew that of Sir Robert de 
Shurland, sometime Warden of the Cinque 
Ports, whose tragic story Ingoldsby has embel- 



The Adventures of Five Days. 145 

lisbed and embroidered in his prose legend of 
' Grey Dolphin.' Forrest's version, as collected 
on the spot from local tradition, is also highly 
picturesque, but the tale, as told in Grose's 
* Antiquities,' is of a more commonplace order. 
This tomb, too, as described by him, differs in 
some particulars from Hogarth's sketch. 

Little more remains to be related of our 
tourists. Hiring a ' Small Vessell (vulgarly 
call'd a Bomb boat) ' at four on Thursday, the 
30th, they embarked for Gravesend. They had 
a bad passage, were sick, and struck on the 
Blythe Sands, but — Tothall's old seafaring 
knowledge aiding — got to their destination at 
ten. At eight next day they hired a boat with 
clean straw, laid in a bottle of wine, pipes, to- 
bacco, and light, and came merrily up the 
river to Billingsgate before a ' Mackrell Gale,* 
though not without the indispensable burlesque 
misadventures on the part of Scott. About two 
they reached their starting place, the Bedford 
Arms. * I think I cannot better Conclude [says 
Forrest] than with taking Notice that not one 
of the Company was unemployed. For Mr. 
Thornhill made the Map, Mr. Hogarth & Mr. 
Scott all the other Drawings, Mr. Tothall was 
our Treasurer which (tho' a Place of the Great- 
est Trust), he faithfully Discharg'd and the fore- 

10 



146 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

going Memoirs was the work of E fforest ' ' The 
Verasity of this Manuscript is attested by us. 
W™ Hogarth Sam^ Scott W'" Tothall J'^" Thorn- 
hill.' It was forthwith transcribed, bound, and 
read out to the delighted Club. Some time 
afterwards it was run into Hudibrastic rhyme 
by the Rev. W. Gostling of Canterbury, whose 
version, as well as Forrest's original, has been 
reprinted by Nichols. For the quotations in 
the foregoing paper, however, we have made 
use of the contemporary manuscript, preserved 
at Bloomsbury. The total expenses of the ex- 
pedition, it may be added, amounted to £(> 6s. 



A RIVAL OF REYNOLDS: 

T^R. JOHNSON once asserted — in a burst 
-*-^ of benignity — that it was better to keep 
half-a-dozen people hungry, than to embarrass 
a belated guest by sitting down to table without 
him. Whether the Doctor was speaking under 
the consciousness of his own shortcomings (or 
rather ' late-comings') is not disclosed. But 
one evening in April, 1778, the party at No. 67, 
Harley Street, were certainly waiting for Dr. 
Johnson, who was the last to arrive. The din- 
ner that followed must have been memorable 
even among those memorable entertainments 
which Boswell so well describes ; and the Bill 
of Company should have satisfied Swift. There 
was, indeed, but one lady, Hannah More's cor- 
respondent, the Hon. Mrs. Boscawen, relict of 
of that gallant Admiral who beat the French at 
Louisburg and Lagos Bay ; but for men there 
was Boswell, there was his ' illustrious friend,' 
there were Reynolds, and Robertson the histo- 
rian, and Langton's brother-in-law, Lord Bin- 
ning. The Bill of Fare was as good as the 
guest-roll, and the * flow of talk ' excellent. 



148 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

Johnson discussed poetry and Pope ; the host 
advanced theories of the ' Iliad ' which Mr. 
Andrew Lang would regard as heretical ; Rob- 
ertson treated of history in general and of his 
own performances in particular. Then he went 
on to speak of the late Lord Clive, and the 
Doctor ' downed ' him with an epigram ; of 
drinking, and the Doctor countered him with 
abstinence ; of his own favoured northern land, 
and the Doctor rode rough-shod over him with 
an inaccurate illustration, which nobody was 
clever enough to contradict. Johnson, in short, 
disported himself altogether in his most approved 
and characteristic fashion. To him, at any rate, 
the evening must have been cloudless, one of 
those Nodes non ebrice sed solutce curls in which 
his soul delighted. On the day following he 
was in magnificent form, and not a little self- 
satisfied. He valued himself — he told Bos- 
well — in that there was nothing of senility in 
his talk (he was nearing seventy) ; and though 
he afterwards grew a little ' heated ' at his 
henchman's ill-timed harping on ' the evils of 
old age,' it was upon this occasion that he gave 
vent to the remarkable utterance — ' I think my- 
self a very polite man.' 

' Elegant of manners ' is Johnson's own dic- 
tionary definition of the epithet he thus appro- 



A Rival of Reynolds, 149 

priates, though it is difficult to conceive, at all 
events from Boswell's pages, that it can ever 
have been really deserved. Yet singularly 
enough, he seems to have been regarded as ' po- 
lite ' by others, and even by his Harley Street 
host, who was certainly entitled to rank as a 
judge. For, if ever there was anyone conspic- 
uous for ease and finish of address, it must have 
been the painter Allan Ramsay, the host in 
question. He was a man of varied accomplish- 
ments ; he was an exceptional linguist ; he was 
a traveller who had seen men and cities ; he was 
a scholar, a courtier, a connoisseur. He had 
written fluently and on many subjects, critical, 
historical, and political ; he had even essayed with 
distinction the inevitable pamphlet on Elizabeth 
Canning, when he crossed swords with Henry 
Fielding.^ * I love Ramsay,' said his principal 

1 He also tried his hand at verse. After Prestonpans 
he produced a satiric imitation of the Song of Deborah, 
putting it into the mouth of * a Jacobite young lady of 
family ; ' and in the * Edinburgh Annual Register ' for 
1813 (1815, p. cccxlv) is a paraphrase by him of * Integer 
vitae,' in which the combination of rhyme and quantity is 
suggested rather than achieved : 

* Should I by hap land on the coast of Lapland, 
Where there no fire is, much less pears and cherries, 
Where stormy weather, sold by hags whose leather 
Faces would fright one.* 



150 Eighteenth Century yignettes. 

guest at the dinner above-mentioned. ^You 
will not find a man in whose conversation there 
is more instruction, more information, and more 
elegance, than in Ramsay's.' Of his gifts as a 
talker, Boswell gives several illustrations. Per- 
haps the most attractive account depicts him at 
Reynolds's, holding his own with such men as 
Gibbon, and Richard Owen Cambridge, and 
Shipley, the Bishop of St. Asaph ; and delight- 
ing the company with his recollections of a visit 
to Horace's villa, a narrative in which the rest 
played up to him with classical quotations. 
The impression left is that of a man of letters 
and an antiquary rather than of a fashionable 
portrait-painter ; and it is perhaps not surpris- 
ing that he was suspected of caring more for 
his reputation as a scholar than for his reputa- 
tion as an artist. Time has revenged itself — 
if this be true — by a disregard of his pictures 
which is greater than they deserve. 

His sire was Allan Ramsay of the ' Gentle 
Shepherd ' and the ' Evergrene,' — that old wig- 
maker-poet who ' theeked pashes ' {i.e. ' thatched 
pates ') at the Mercury, opposite to Niddry's- 
Wynd in Edinburgh, but not the less claimed 
kindred with the noble family of Dalhousie. 

* Dalhousie of an auld descent, 
My chief, my stoup and ornament/ 



A Rival of Reynolds, 151 

he sang, and what is more, like the * ruin'd 
spendthrift' in Goldsmith, he 'had his claims 
allow'd,' being, in very truth, great-grandson to 
the Laird of Cockpen, a cadet of that ancient 
house. His son Allan, the first of seven chil- 
dren, was born in 171 3, and seems to have been 
an artist from his boyhood. When about twenty, 
he came to London, lodging in Orange Court 
by Leicester Fields, and entering himself forth- 
with at the St. Martin's Lane Academy, an in- 
stitution then (or soon after) housed in Roubil- 
lac's old studio, and superintended, for the most 
part, by Hogarth, whose large ' Hudibras' had 
been dedicated to the author of the ' Gentle 
Shepherd.' Returning to his native town, after 
a two years' absence, young Ramsay set out in 
July, 1736, for a prolonged visit to Italy. His 
travelling companion was an Edinburgh physi- 
cian. Dr. Alexander Cunningham (afterwards 
Sir Alexander Dick of Prestonfield, Bart.), 
portions of whose diary were published some 
forty years ago in the ' Gentleman's Magazine.^ 
They give a good idea of a Grand Tour only 
three years earlier than that of Gray and Wal- 
pole, the same places being, in more than one 
instance, visited by each pair of travellers. At 
Amiens they admired the Cathedral ; at Chan- 
tilly, the Duke of Bourbon's magnificent palace 



152 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

and stables ; at Paris they visited the Palais 
Royal and Walpole's favourite Italian Comedy. 
They also promenaded the Luxembourg gar- 
dens, where they were edified by the ' very 
flaming appearance ' of the cheeks of the ladies, 
especially those who were married. Taking 
lodgings in the Rue Dauphine, they made ex- 
cursions to the Academy of Painting, the col- 
lection of the Cardinal de Polignac, and the 
Invalides. With the French opera they were 
as little impressed as Gray and Walpole, hold- 
ing the music to be * loud and noisy, great in 
the execution, but very mean and little in the 
harmonious part which belongs to good music' 
At Versailles they marvelled at the formal arti- 
ficial character of the gardens, ' no ways in the 
style of nature,' though they admired the stat- 
uary of M. Francois Girardon, and (in the pal- 
ace itself) the great canvases of wars and sieges. 
They were also fortunate enough to witness the 
* grandes eauxj' which intermittent and expen- 
sive entertainment was ordered for the benefit 
of some Polish visitors to Maria Leczinska. 

At the end of August they turned their faces 
southward towards Italy, setting out by way of 
Lyons. Much of their journey henceforth was 
performed in the old dragboats or coches-d'eau^ 
carrying motley freights of priests, gardes-du- 



A Rival of Reynolds. 153 

corps^ Jesuits and Knights of Malta. ' In gen- 
eral,' says the journal, ' they [the priests, etc.] 
were very noisy, eat, drank, and sung perpet- 
ually ; and at night those that did not go ashore 
lay in the boat all higgledy-piggledy, , which is 
their usual custom.' By Sens and Auxerre, the 
travellers drove through the Burgundian vine- 
yards to Chalons, and so again down the Sadne 
and Rhone by coche-d'eau to Avignon. * In our 
company we had a strange mixture of riff-raff 
sort of people, particularly a very witty, comi- 
cal girl of Lyons, a Provenpal priest who was 
very entertaining, a slattern from Marseilles 
without virtue or modesty, and a Roman with 
his wife and daughter who gave good diversion. 
As we went along we got every now and then 
a fresh cargo of Cordeliers and Capuchin 
monks.' Passing over roads perfumed with 
lavender and rosemary, they came to Aix, and 
thence descended to Marseilles, where they 
visited the great Exchange with its solemn as- 
semblage of merchants of all nationalities, Per- 
sians, Armenians, Egyptians, Turks, and noted 
in the streets the pitiable spectacle of the galley- 
slaves, chained two and two, ' some of them 
gentlemen formerly of great condition.' At 
Nice they inspected the anchovy fishery ; at 
Genoa they were robbed. Off Pisa they were 



154 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

cast away in a felouche, or felucca, and all but 
drowned. Finally, on the 26th October, they 
reached what the elder Ramsay, writing to John 
Smibert of Covent Garden, the friend who 
painted his portrait, describes as * the seat of 
the Beast.' 

At Rome, after exploring the city, Ramsay 
settled down steadily to work, drawing in the 
evening at the French Academy, and studying 
by day under Francesco Imperiali, at that deca- 
dent time reckoned the foremost of the Italian 
history-painters. According to Allan Cunning- 
ham, he also received instruction from another 
Francesco Solimena (otherwise the Abate 
Ciccio), then an old man of eighty. Having 
remained in Italy three years, Ramsay returned 
to Edinburgh, where he devoted himself mainly 
to portraits. He painted his sister Janet ; he 
painted Duncan Forbes the judge ; he painted 
a portrait of Archibald Campbell, third Duke of 
Argyll, in his robes as Lord of Session. Other 
early sitters were Sir John Barnard, Colonel 
Sir Peter Halkett (afterwards killed in Brad- 
dock's ill-fated expedition), and Dr. Mead of 
the Library. In due time Ramsay moved to 
London. Urbane, accessible and expert, he 
speedily found friends, one of his first patrons 
being the Earl of Bridgewater. Then he leaped 



A Rival of Reynolds.. 155 

into fashion with a lucky full-length of Lord 
Bute, to whom he fitted a pair of legs that even 
stirred a gentle emulation in the unenvious breast 
of Reynolds. ' I wish,' said Reynolds, speak- 
ing of a portrait he had in progress, ' to show 
legs with Ramsay's Lord Bute.' 

In the twenty years that followed 1740 Ramsay 
must have been exceptionally active. Flora 
Macdonald, Lady Boyd, Admirals Boscawen 
and Stewart, Lord Hardwicke and Judge Burnet, 
these, and a host of other notabilities, royal and 
courtly, owed their pictorial immortality to his 
brush, aided by the scraping tools of McArdell 
and the younger Faber. He painted not only 
portraits but decorations, and soon began to 
employ an army of assistants. More than this, 
he made money. * I am informed,' says Allan 
Cunningham, probably on the authority of the 
son of Ramsay's pupil, Philip Reinagle, * that 
before he [Ramsay] had the luck to become a 
favourite with the King, he was perfectly inde- 
pendent as to fortune, having in one way or 
another, accumulated not less than forty thou- 
sand pounds.' It may well be imagined that this 
success, coupled with his avowed adherence to 
those foreign masters among whom he had 
served his apprenticeship, was not viewed with 
entire equanimity by some of his more able but 



156 Eighteenth Century Fignettes. 

less fortunate rivals ; and Hogarth, whose gains 
by his paintings were of the poorest, may per- 
haps be forgiven for girding at ' Mr. Ram's-eye, 
and his quick-sighted and impartial coadjutors.' 
That Ramsay was seriously compared with 
Reynolds is more difficult to understand. Yet 
it is clear, from Rouquet and others, that at this 
time he was not only equally admired, but even 
preferred. Horace Walpole, whom he painted 
in 1758, reflects this view. * Reynolds,' he says, 
' is bold, and has a kind of tempestuous colour- 
ing, yet with dignity and grace ; Ramsay is all 
delicacy. Mr. Reynolds seldom succeeds in 
women [I] ; Mr. Ramsay is formed to paint 
them.' Ramsay had manifestly fascinated his 
sitter, who praises his * genuine wit,' his just 
' manner of reasoning,' and his merits as an 
author ; and where Walpole's partialities were en- 
listed, his judgment generally fails him. It is, 
however, but fair to add that, in 17^9, the date of 
the above utterance, the star of Reynolds was 
not fully risen. Twenty years later, when the 
Abbot of Strawberry had become the fortunate 
possessor of ' The Ladies Waldegrave,' he had 
probably revised his verdict. 

For the moment, however, the star of Ramsay 
was in the ascendant, and with the accession of 
George HI., the politic portrayer of Lord Bute's 



A Rival of Reynolds. 157 

shapely extremities, who, in addition, had the 
advantage of being able to talk fluent German to 
Queen Charlotte on many topics besides art, 
became even a greater favourite with those in 
power. In 1767 he succeeded Shackelton as 
portrait-painter to the Court, an appointment 
which multiplied his commissions, especially for 
pictures of royal personages, to an inordinate 
extent, turning his studio into a mere manufac- 
tory of portraits. Little in these but the head 
was executed by himself, and even the head in 
course of time fell to pupils who, like Reinagle 
the elder, had caught their master's manner. 
The King was in the habit of presenting elabo- 
rate full-lengths of himself and Queen to all the 
foreign ambassadors (two of the first of these 
went to the Duke de Nivernais at Paris), ^ and 
Ramsay's studio, first in Soho and afterwards in 
Harley Street, where it overflowed into the hay- 
loft and coachrooms at the back, was seldom 
free from Royal effigies in various stages of com- 
position. With the King he was as popular 
as with the Queen, and his Majesty seems to 
have more than once plagiarised the famous 

1 They are referred to in a letter from Nivernais to 
M. D'Eon, dated i6 June, 1763. The Duke begs him not 
to let M. Ramsay make them, frames included, more than 
eight feet high at most. 



158 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

anecdote of Moliere and the ' en-cas-de-nuit ' 
of Louis XIV., by inviting Mr. Ramsay to 
share, or rather succeed to, his own special 
and particular refection of boiled mutton and 
turnips — a piece of condescension which for- 
tunately escaped that caustic rhymer Peter 
Pindar, who was not in the habit of sparing the 
Harley Street picture-shop. Churchill, how- 
ever, hitched Ramsay into the ^ Prophecy of 
Famine.' * Thence,' he says, speaking of 
Scotland, 

* Thence came the Ramsays, names of worthy note. 
Of whom one paints, as well as t'other wrote.' 

— a couplet too equivocal, one would imagine, 
to have aroused, as it did, the * compatriotic ' 
wrath of Allan Cunningham. Luckily the task 
of adjusting vacuous royal faces to * arrange- 
ments ' of robes and regalia did not so com- 
pletely absorb Ramsay's energies as to prevent 
him from executing many excellent likenesses 
of his more distinguished contemporaries. His 
presentments of Henry Fox, Lord Mansfield, 
Gibbon, Nivernais, Lord Chesterfield (in the 
National Portrait Gallery), Hume, Rousseau, 
and many others, all belong to this part of his 
career. 

Dispersed in many places, comparison of his 



A Rival of Reynolds, 159 

works is difficult, if not impracticable. But 
three very typical examples are to be found at 
Edinburgh. They are the Hume and Rousseau 
above mentioned, and the portrait of the painter's 
wife, Margaret Lindsay, the eldest daughter of 
Sir Alexander Lindsay, of Evelick, in Perth^ and 
the niece of Lord Mansfield. This last, his 
masterpiece and one of the many valuable be- 
quests of Lady Murray, is a very beautiful and 
charming production, which goes far to make 
intelligible the praise which Walpole gives to 
Ramsay's women. The other two are historic. 
Both were executed in 1766, the year of that 
absurd misunderstanding between the Self- 
tormentor and his ' Guide, Philosopher, and 
Friend,' over which so much eighteenth-century 
ink was spilled. They must have been painted 
shortly after the arrival of the pair in England 
in January ; and that of Rousseau was appar- 
ently interrupted by the quarrel, since it is as- 
serted that he refused to continue the sittings, 
and the portrait, in which he wears the Armenian 
dress he had recently adopted, is supposed to 
have been finished from such furtive glimpses 
of him as could be obtained in public. That 
of Hume exhibits the historian in his chargi 
d'affaires period, when, as the apostle of Deism, 
he divided with ' whisk ' the admiration of the 



i6o Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

Parisians. Another excellent and little-known 
example of Ramsay, is the likeness, in later life, 
of that delightful Lady Hervey (once the 
' beautiful Molly Lepel' of Pope and Gay) to 
whom Horace Walpole wrote so many letters. 
Indeed, the picture formerly belonged to Wal- 
pole, having been, of yore, in a Grinling Gibbons 
frame, one of the chief ornaments of the Cottage 
in the Flower Garden at Strawberry Hill.^ 

Ramsay was not entirely constant to London. 
Once he went back to Edinburgh for a time, 
and founded a ' Select Society,' which not only 
numbered among its earlier members his old 
fellow-traveller. Sir Alexander Dick, but such 
major notabilities as Hume and Robertson and 
Adam Smith. Twice he returned to Rome, 
copying inscriptions at the Vatican with the 
ardour of a professional antiquary. Shortly 
after his second visit, while showing his Harley 
Street household how to escape in case of fire, 
he fell and dislocated his right arm. With ex- 
traordinary fortitude, he finished the picture on 
which he was working — a portrait of course of 
the reigning Monarch of these isles — but he 
never really recovered the shock to his system. 
Leaving Reinagle to struggle with some fifty 

1 It is now in the possession of Viscount Lifford at 
Austin House, Broadway, Worcestershire. 



A Rival of Reynolds, i6i 

pairs of Royalties (a six years' task of which 
the life-long horror turned that hapless deputy 
into an animal painter), he set out on a fourth 
visit to Italy, where he coi}tinued to reside as an 
invalid, until, at last, returning in a fit of home 
sickness, he died in August, 1784, a few days 
after reaching Dover. He was buried in St. 
Marylebone Church. ' Poor Ramsay,' wrote 
Johnson gloomily to Reynolds, ' on which side 
soever I turn, mortality presents its formidable 
frown.' Others regretted him as sincerely. 
He was a kind friend, a good son, a worthy 
and a prosperous gentleman. As an artist more 
than one cause had served to determine the 
direction and conditions of his work. He paid 
the penalty of his versatility in its distractions 
from his professed vocation ; he paid the penalty 
of his success in the depression of his standard. 
His portraits have the merit of intelligently re- 
producing their originals : had you encountered 
those originals in the street, you would prob- 
ably have recognized them far more readily than 
you would have recognized the idealized sitters 
of Sir Joshua. He is not a great colourist, com- 
poser, character-painter. But he is instructed, 
he is unaffected, he is thoroughly (in the Lam- 
besque sense of the word) 'genteel.' Walpole 
thought he lacked subjects more than genius ; 

II 



1 62 Eighteenth Century yignettes. 

Northcote, that his ability fell short of his con- 
ception. It is more likely that he attained the 
allotted limit of his powers. His art was a 
pleasant and lucrative pursuit, not a consuming 
passion. 



FIELDING'S LIBRARY. 

n^HERE is -a passage in Thackeray's letters to 
-*■ Mrs. Brookfield which — upon one of his 
readers, at all events — has always jarred a little 
unpleasantly. He is writing of Fielding — that 
Fielding whose reputation his own fine lecture 
was afterwards to serve so splendidly, and to 
whose robust genius he himself is not lightly 
indebted. He says : * I have just got two new 
novels from the library by Mr. Fielding ; the 
one is *' Amelia," the most delightful portrait of 
a woman that surely ever was painted ; the 
other is " Joseph Andrews," which gives me no 
particular pleasure, for it is both coarse and 
careless, and the author makes an absurd brag 
of his two-penny learning, upon which he values 
himself evidently more than upon the best of 
his own qualities.' Now, it is not to the 
' Amelia ' part of this utterance that one need 
object ; nor do we desire to defend the grosser 
lapses of Fielding's burlesque upon Richardson. 
But, taking into consideration both the speaker 
and the subject, the little outburst as to ' two- 



1 64 Eighteenth Century f^ignettes. 

penny learning ' is certainly uncalled for. We 
have it upon Prior's authority that there is no 
obligation to swear to the truth of a song : and 
it would be equally superfluous to insist upon 
the exact justification of every light-hearted 
boutade which might escape a playful writer in 
a private and familiar correspondence. Some- 
thing, too, in the latter case, must be allowed 
for the occasion, for the person addressed, and 
(to speak paradoxically) for the written tone of 
voice. Regarded, however, for the sake of ar- 
gument, as the serious utterance of one great 
novelist concerning another^ it has always 
seemed to us that this particular characteri- 
sation is, to say the least, ill-considered. For 
if Fielding was anything at all, he was a genuine 
scholar. He had been educated at Eton ; and 
he is declared by his first biographer, Arthur 
Murphy, to have left that place ' uncommonly 
versed in the Greek authors, and an early mas- 
ter of the Latin classics.' He had also for a 
short time studied diligently in the University 
of Leyden, under its professor of Civil Law, 
the ' learned Vitriarius ; ' and it is allowed, and 
is indeed abundantly proved by the notes to the 
enlarged version of ' Tom Thumb,' that, with 
the excesses of his later life in London, he had 
managed to combine an unusual amount of read- 



Fielding's Library. 165 

ing, at once systematic and recondite. To this 
he must have added a certain acquaintance with 
modern languages. ' Tuscan and French are in 
my head,' he tells us in his rhymed Epistle to 
Sir Robert Walpole. Nor was it to his younger 
days alone that his love of the classics was con- 
fined. ' He retained a strong admiration for 
them,' says Murphy, ' in all the subsequent pas- 
sages of his life.' The same writer speaks of 
him as quietly reading Cicero ' de Consolatione ' 
in seasons of sorrow and dejection ; and he ap- 
parently carried a volume of Plato with him on 
his last pilgrimage in search of health, for even 
on the ' Queen of Portugal ' he quotes a long 
passage from that philosopher. It is besides to 
be observed that his learning, as revealed in his 
books, has generally a singularly unforced and 
spontaneous air. Unless absolutely appropriate 
to the character represented, it seldom, in ' Tom 
Jones ' at all events, is obtruded in the body of 
the story, but is restricted to those ' prolego- 
menous, or introductory Chapters,' in which, 
to use George Eliot's words, the author ' seems 
to bring his arm-chair to the proscenium and 
chat with us in all the lusty ease of his fine 
English.' Moreover his classical quotations 
were not like Captain Shandon's, sharked out 
of Burton's * Anatomy ; ' and however hack- 



1 66 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

neyed they have now become by constant repe- 
tition, they must have been fresh enough when 
he first found them at the end of his quill. In 
short, as, with respect to this very charge of 
pedantry, one of his most capable critics has 
remarked, ' what with some men is ostentation 
was in his case the simple application of mate- 
rials which early habit had made so familiar that 
they had lost their learned air and were entirely 
native to him.' ^ If this is, as we believe it to 
be, an accurate statement of the case, it com- 
pletely disposes of that random deliverance of 
Colonel Esmond's biographer in regard to the 
market value, in copper coinage, of his prede- 
cessor's erudition. And, without for a moment 
admitting any charge of ' absurd brag,' it is per- 
fectly conceivable that the author of ' Joseph 
Andrews ' may not have been unwilling to em- 
phasise the fact that his literary equipment was 
something widely different from the stock-in- 
trade of those easy-moralled gentlemen of the 
pen, his contemporaries, who borrowed their 
artless Latinity from the mottoes to the ' Spec- 
tator,' or subsisted fraudulently upon ' Propo- 
sals ' for fresh translations from the Greek, out 
of the French of Madame Dacier. 

1 * Quarterly Review,* No. cxcv. (December, 1855). 
Tradition ascribes the authorship of this admirable article 
to the Rev. Whitwell Elwin. 



Fielding's Library, 167 

But whatever may have been the exact amount 
of Fielding's scholarship, there can be no doubt 
— though the fact has not hitherto been made 
known — that he was exceptionally well pro- 
vided with the materials for a scholar's reputa- 
tion. To the devotees of the time-honoured 
tradition which represents him as scribbling off 
farce-scenes at tavern tables upon the paper 
which had wrapped his tobacco, it will perhaps 
come as a surprise to hear that he died pos- 
sessed of an exceedingly well-chosen and 
' polite ' library of books, as varied in character 
as Johnson's, more extensive by far than Gold- 
smith's, and — in the matter of those authors 
whom Moses Primrose describes comprehen- 
sively as 'the Ancients' — as richly endowed 
as that of Gray. His biographers have made 
no reference to this fact, probably for the best 
of all good reasons — that it was not known to 
them. But in the course of certain minute in- 
vestigations into the first appearance of the 
' Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon,' the present 
writer came unexpectedly on the following 
notification in the ' Public Advertiser ' for 
Thursday, February 6, 175^, four months after 
Fielding's death at Lisbon. As it is not likely 
to be often consulted in situ, it is here in part 
transcribed : * This day is publish'd a Catalogue 



1 68 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

of the entire and valuable Library of Books of 
the Late Henry Fielding, Esq., which (by 
Order of the Administrator) will be sold by 
Auction, by Samuel Baker, at his House in 
York Street, Covent Garden, on Monday next, 
and the three following Evenings, for the ben- 
efit of his Wife and Family. Among many 
other valuable Books are the following in Folio. 
[Here is printed a double column list.] There 
are likewise most of the Greek Commentators 
on Aristotle, and several Books with Mr. Field- 
ing's MSS. Notes.' 

The advertisement goes on to say when the 
collection may be viewed ' till the Time of Sale, 
which will begin at Half an Hour after Five 
o'clock ' in the evening ; and it adds that cata- 
logues can be obtained gratis of Mr. Andrew 
Millar in the Strand (Fielding's publisher), Mr. 
Robert Dodsley of Pall Mall, and others. It 
was repeated on the 7th and 8th, and on Mon- 
day the loth, as announced, the sale no doubt 
began. But of this the ' Public Advertiser ' 
makes no further mention. Fortunately one 
of the catalogues is preserved in the British 
Museum ; and the gentleman to whom it be- 
longed — perhaps Mr. Baker himself — has 
been far-seeing enough to price it for the ben- 
efit of Posterity. Against nearly every one of 



Fielding's Library, 169 

the 653 lots it comprises, he has inserted the 
sum realised, and the total of the four evenings' 
sale is £}()^ js. id., or about ;^ioo more than 
the public were willing to give in 1785 for the 
books of Johnson, which also extended to 650 
lots, and were in all probability far more numer- 
ous. The majority of the amounts at the Field- 
ing sale are small, and prompt the inference that 
the condition of the volumes must have been 
indifferent, or the state of the market bad. Of 
the valuable Folios specified in the Advertise- 
ment, the Statutes at Large, 34 vols., fetched 
£\o \ Rymer's ' Foedera' 20 vols., £1^ 105.; 
Buckley's ' Thuanus,' 7 vols., £<) 1^5. ; Bayle's 
* Dictionary,' 5 vols., ;:^3 13s. 6i. ; Moreri's, 
6 vols., £1 ys. ; and the 1578 * Plato ' of 
Serranus (which Fielding quotes in the * Jour- 
nal of a Voyage to Lisbon') 2 vols, only out of 
3 Q)i £^- Grotius, in 4 vols., went for ;^2 95. ; 
Plutarch, the Paris edition of 1624, 2 vols., for 
;£'3 45., and Homer, with that commentary of 
Monsieur Eustathius to which the ' great author ' 
makes reference in * Amelia,' for ^£2 125. 6d. 
Aristotle, strange to say, notwithstanding the 
stress laid upon him by the auctioneer, is quoted 
at prices ^ which would have puzzled that stout 
Stagirite.' His * Opera,' Duval's Paris edition 
of 1619-29 in two folio volumes, once in high 



170 Eighteenth Century ^^ignettes, 

repute, was knocked down for i6s., or 35. less 
than the Ammianus Marcellinus of Gronovius, 
1693, while his Commentators got no higher 
than 20s. — nay, in some cases — if the fact 
may be inferred from the absence of any figures 
opposite their names — they even failed to ob- 
tain any purchaser at all. On the other hand, cer- 
tain folios to which the auctioneer had called no 
particular attention, realised fair amounts. For 
example, £6 los. was the price paid for the 
great ' History of France,' of Monsieur Fran- 
cois Eudes du Mezeray, 1643-51, the same 
edition as that which Matthew Prior left to St. 
John's College, and concerning which he wrote 
the pretty verses to be found in his works. ^ 

Turning the leaves of Mr. Baker's little 
pamphlet one is struck, as in the case of John- 
son, by the absence of copies of the writer's 
own works. ^ This is the more remarkable be- 
cause, in Johnson's case, many volumes had 
confessedly been withdrawn from sale before- 
hand, but Fielding's Catalogue is described as 
comprising his ' entire ' library. Such being so, 
it must be concluded that the only books writ- 
ten by himself which he possessed at his death 

^ See the close of * Matthew Prior ' in this volume. 
2 See ' Johnson's Library ' in ' Eighteenth Century 
Vignettes,' 1894, pp. 187-198. 



Fielding's Library. 171 

were two odd volumes of the * Miscellanies ' of 
1743 ; two more odd volumes of his most worth- 
less productions, ^his dramatic works ; the sec- 
ond and corrected edition of ' Jonathan Wild,' 
1754, and the commendable little ^ Enquiry into 
the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers,* 
etc., 175 1. There is no copy of ' Tom Jones,' 
of 'Amelia,' of 'Joseph Andrews.' Nor are 
there any specimens of those performances of 
his sister Sarah, for some of which he had sup- 
plied Prefaces, and more than Prefaces.^ The 
same must be said of hi? periodical and journal- 
istic efforts, the ' Champion,' the ' True Patriot,' 
the ' Jacobite's Journal,' for which last his 
friend Hogarth had designed the headpiece. 
On the other hand, there are several works 
which contain his MS. notes. Wood's ' Insti- 
tutes ' (the valuable legal authority relied on by 
Parson Barnabas) was interleaved and copiously 
commented ; so was Hedericus his ' Lexicon ; ' 
so was Ainsworth's ' Dictionary.' Lastly, there 

1 To the second volume of the * Familiar Letters be- 
tween the Principal Characters in David Simple ' he con- 
tributed five epistles, which have generally escaped his 
editors. The most characteristic of them — an imitation 
of a letter from a French traveller in England to his friend 
at Paris — was, however, reprinted by Professor Saintsbury 
in the final volume of his recent edition of Fielding's 
* Works/ xii. 232-242. 



172 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

were five folio volumes of Law Manuscripts, 
which, it must be presumed, did not include the 
two volumes (also folio) on Crown Law which 
Fielding left behind unpublished, as these in 
1760, according to Murphy, were still in the 
keeping of Sir John Fielding. Sir John had 
also preserved the laborious excerpts from the 
Fathers which his brother had made for his pro- 
jected refutation of Bolingbroke, whose com- 
plete works, as we know from Boswell and 
Garrick's ' Ode' were put forth by Mallet on 
the very day of the death of Henry Pelham, 
the patron to whom Fielding dedicated the 
' Proposal for the Poor.' 

* The same sad morn to church and state 
(So for our sins, 't was fix'd by fate) 

A double stroke was giv'n ; 
Black as the whirlwinds of the north, 

St. y It's fell genius issued forth 

And PelhanCs fled to heav'n.' 

Mallet's volumes are not included in the Cata- 
logue, but Fielding must have had them, for 
he specially refers to them in the posthumous 

* Fragment of a Comment on L. Bolingbroke's 
Essays,' which is printed at the end of the 

* Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon.' With the 
same ' Journal,' it may be added, their date of 
publication (6th March, 17^4) is incidentally 



Fielding's Library. 173 

connected. * I was at the worst,' its author 
writes, ' on that memorable day when the public 
lost Mr. Pelham/ 

But if Mallet's tardy revelation of ' St. John's 
fell genius ' (one remembers Johnson's outburst 
about the beggarly Scotchman and the blunder- 
buss !) was not among Fielding's books when 
sold, being possibly left behind at Lisbon with 
the missing volume of Plato, there are several 
other items in the Catalogue of which he speaks 
expressly in his works, and most of all in the 

* Journal.' There is the ' Hudibras ' of Zachary 
Grey, to whose ^redundant notes' it renders 
testimony ; there are Petty's * Political Arith- 
metic ' and the ' Sermons ' of South, also men- 
tioned in the same place ; there are Banier's 

* Mythology and Fables of the Ancients ex- 
plained ' (4 vols., 1739) and Miller's ' Garden- 
er's Calendar' (1745), to both of which he calls 
attention in ' Tom Jones ; ' there are ' Mon- 
taigne ' and Baker's ' Chronicle ' and Steele's 
Plays, all specifically referred to in * Joseph 
Andrews.' There is Bishop Burnet's ' History 
of my Own Time,' the great folios of 1724-34, 
whose editor, Thomas Burnet the Judge, Field- 
ing describes as his ' ever-honoured and beloved 
friend ; ' there are Berkeley and Prior on that 
Tar Water to which he had recourse before 



174 Eighteenth Century l^ignettes. 

leaving England, and which has an earlier claim 
than Tea to the invaluable property of * cheer- 
ing but not inebriating.' Of books inscribed to 
him, we have only detected Coventry's ' Pom- 
pey the Little ; ' but even had his collection 
been larger and less eclectic, we should scarcely 
have looked to find in it another performance 
which did him the honour of a dedication, to 
wit, the scurrilous ' Apology for the Life of Mr. 
Bampfylde-Moore Carew, commonly call'd the 
King of the Beggars.' There are, however, 
certain works absent from his shelves which 
might reasonably have been expected to be 
found there. He must assuredly at some time 
— if only for business purposes — have owned 
a copy of ' Pamela ; ' and his mention of 
* Clarissa ' in the ' Jacobite's Journal,' with its 
admirably apposite quotation from Horace : — 

'. . . Pectus inaniter angit, 
Irritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet 
Ut Magus . . ." 

shows that he thoroughly appreciated the 
sorcery of Richardson.^ Yet neither of these 

1 This occurred in a notice of the first two volumes. 
Oddly enough, in his long ' Postscript ' to ' Clarissa,' Rich- 
ardson makes use of the same passage when defending 
his catastrophe. 



Fielding's Library. 175 

is In the Catalogue, nor are there copies of the 
' Paysan Parvenu' and the ' Histoire de Mari- 
anne ' of M. de Marivaux, an author with whose 
merits he was fully acquainted, and by whom, 
as that acute critic. Professor Saintsbury, has 
more than once pointed out, he was himself 
in a measure influenced. The absence of fic- 
tion generally from his library is indeed one of 
its notable features. For, with the exception 
of Jarvis' ' Don Quixote' (1749), and Coven- 
try's ' Pompey,' the ' Father of the English 
Novel' (credite posted !) appears to have been 
contented to limit his examples of what has been 
happily styled ' anodyne literature ' to the ' Har- 
riot Stuart' and ' Arabella ' of Mrs. Charlotte 
Lenox, — a friend to whose ' shamefully dis- 
tress'd ' condition in the world of letters his last 
book feelingly refers. 

But — though we have but touched the fringes 
of the subject — there are limits, even in a bib- 
liographical article, to the mere enumeration of 
titles. If Fielding had few novels and romances, 
he was fairly equipped with poets ; and, as 
became the author of ' Pasquin ' and ' Tom 
Thumb,' he was rich in playwrights. In biog- 
raphy, science, philosophy, theology, he had 
many standard works, the dates of which fre- 
quently suggest that they must have been bought 



176 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

as they were first issued. But his largest and 
most important sections are in law and classical 
literature. His assemblage of legal authorities 
is unusually extensive, and probably far more 
significant to experienced eyes than it seems to 
the layman who only recognizes here and there 
names which, like the Salkeld and Ventris of 
Goldsmith's * Citizen of the World,' and the 
' Fletas, Bractons, Cokes,' of Swift's ' Cadenus 
and Vanessa,' have casually strayed into the 
domain of belles lettres. About his collection of 
Greek and Latin classics, however, there is no 
doubt, at all events as regards variety and range. 
Whether his editions of Lucian and Aristo- 
phanes, of Homer and iEschylus, would have 
satisfied the ' Doctor Dewlaps ' of Dibdin's 
time, or the margin-measuring wiseacres who 
in the last century debated the merits of the 
* Greek Aldus or the Dutch Frobenius ' at Tom 
Payne's by the Mews Gate, this deponent say- 
eth not ; but they should certainly be allowed 
to count towards absolving their possessor from 
the charge of superficial erudition. This, after 
all, is the position here advanced. Of course, 
as we are reminded by the inimitable ' Tom 
Folio ' of Addison, the mere accumulation of 
books may mean no more, nay, even less, than 
the — from a literary point of view — barren 



Fielding's Library, 177 

science of title-pages. But when it is found 
that in his youth Fielding had been a fer- 
vent student of the classics ; that he remained 
throughout life a voracious reader ; and that 
his works everywhere afford confirmation of 
both these things, it is perhaps not unreason- 
able to conclude that he made good use of 
the large collection of Greek and Latin authors 
which he left behind him at his death, and that 
he was, in reality, the scholar he has been 
affirmed to be. In any case, the evidence for 
his learning is a hundred times better than most 
of that which for years past has been industri- 
ously brought forward in regard to some of the 
less worshipful incidents of his career. 



12 



''CAMBRIDGE, THE EVERYTHING." 

"\TOT for a moment to leave the reader at a 
^^ loss in presence of an ambiguous title, let 
us hasten to copy a passage from that cornucopia 
of small talk — the correspondence of Horace 
Walpole. He is writing in the summer of iy<,<, 
to Richard Bentley (son of the famous Master 
of Trinity) , concerning his neighbours at Twick- 
enham. 'We shall be,' says he, ^as celebrated 
as Baiae or Tivoli ; and, if we have not such 
sonorous names as they boast, we have very 
famous people : Olive and Pritchard, actresses ; 
Scott and Hudson painters ; my Lady Suffolk, 
famous in her time ; Mr. H[ickey], the impu- 
dent lawyer, that Tom Hervey wrote against ; 
Whitehead, the poet — and' (the italics are 
ours) ' Cambridge, the everything.'' Most of 
these names need little explanation. Catherine 
Clive and Hannah Pritchard have long since 
been offered up to the dramatic biographer ; 
Lady Suffolk — perhaps more easily recognized 
as the ' Mrs. Howard' of Pope and Gay — is 
part of the history of George II. ; Hudson and 



** Cambridge, the Everything,'' 179 

Scott are still remembered — one as the master 
of Reynolds, the other as the ' English Cana- 
letto ; ' while Hickey and Paul Whitehead re- 
spectively have been preserved for posterity, 
with more or less distinction, in the ' Retalia- 
tion ' of Goldsmith and the ' Conference ' of 
Churchill. It is only the last of Walpole's list — 
and strangely enough the very one upon whom 
his complimentary pen confers universality of 
merit — who now requires the assistance of the 
commentator. And yet, as the friend of Ches- 
terfield and Johnson, as the author of a once 
commended mock-heroic poem, as a valued con- 
tributor to Dodsley's society paper, as a wit 
and man of the world who had enjoyed the fullest 
opportunities for studying what the Fine Lady 
in ' Lethe ' calls the ' Quincettence and Emptily ' 
of things, Richard Owen Cambridge certainly 
seems to merit something more than the formal 
footnote of the forgotten. We purpose, there- 
fore, to repair this injustice by offering to his 
neglected shade the tribute of a short essay. 

He came of a Gloucestershire family, and was 
born in London in February, 1717, a few months 
before Horace Walpole. His father, who was 
a Turkey merchant, died soon after his birth, 
and he was left to the care of his mother, and 
that of an uncle, whose heir he became, and 



i8o Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

from whom he afterwards adopted his name of 
Owen. At an early age he went to iEton, where 
his contemporaries were Walpole, Gray, West, 
and Jacob Bryant, the future mythologist who 
doubted about Troy, but believed in Chatterton. 
He was not a member either of the Walpole 
' triumvirate ' or ' quadruple alliance,' but West, 
Bryant, and a son of Earl Berkeley, who was 
afterwards killed at Fontenoy, seem to have 
formed with young Cambridge a group which 
was distinguished for its histrionic abilities — 
Cambridge, in particular, being noted for his 
renderings of FalstafF, of Torismond in Dryden's 
'Spanish Fryar,' and of Micio in the 'Adelphi.' 
Beyond this he was mainly remarkable for a 
taste for Greek and Roman history, and a bias 
towards athletic sports and landscape gardening. 
At this time the head master was Dr. William 
George, the bombastic pedant whom his pupils 
nicknamed ' Dionysius the tyrant,' but who, 
notwithstanding Cambridge's admission (or af- 
fectation) of indolence, seems to have treated 
him with exceptional leniency. From Eton he 
passed, in 1734, to St. John's College, Oxford, 
as a gentleman commoner. Of his university 
career little has survived save some conventional 
stanzas with which he swelled the congratula- 
tory chorus to Frederick, Prince of Wales, on 



'* Cambridge, the Everything." i8i 

his marriage ; and the brief record of a tour with 
Horace Walpole in Norfolk, which wound up 
at Houghton, where he made the acquaintance 
of Horace's father, Sir Robert, and of the Duke 
of Newcastle, afterwards also Prime Minister. 
He left Oxford to enter himself — again like 
Walpole — at Lincoln's Inn, where he lived 
upon the same staircase as Isaac Hawkins 
Browne, the parodist of ' A Pipe of Tobacco,' 
by whom he was introduced to some literary 
friends. He also made others for himself, one 
of the latter being Thomas Edwards, author of 
the once authoritative 'Canons of Criticism.' 
Then, the hard frost of 1739-40 having broken 
up a plan — which he never resumed — for the 
orthodox Grand Tour, he married a Miss Mary 
Trenchard, granddaughter of a secretary of state 
to William III., and settled down at four-and- 
twenty to live the life of an English country 
gentleman. 

Whitminster, or Wheatenhurst, in Gloucester- 
shire, where he took up his abode, is a little 
village on the left bank of the Severn, or rather, 
to be exact, on the right bank of its tributary, 
the Stroud. The country gentleman of 1740 
almost inevitably suggests the type which, nine 
years later. Fielding created in ' Tom Jones.' 
Part of this famous novel, it may be remem- 



i82 Eighteenth Century Fignettes. 

bered, is enacted in this very county, and Mr. 
Cambridge was no doubt personally acquainted 
with that popular Mrs. Whitefield of the Bell 
at Gloucester, who figures in Book VIII. But 
Cambridge himself must have been another-guess 
person from Fielding's noisy fox-hunter, with 
his ' Wut ha's,' and his view-halloos. In the 
first place, besides an already-mentioned fancy 
for natural scenery and landscape gardening, he 
had a distinct gift for boat-building, a taste 
which the splendid opportunities of the Severn, 
widening southward from Westbury, seem to 
have stimulated to the utmost", and he must 
have been especially skilful in the devising of 
water parties, and what the French call prome- 
nades en bateau. One of the most beautiful of 
his fleet of pleasure boats was built upon the 
Venetian pattern, having a cabin capable of 
holding about thirty persons, which cabin, more- 
over, was tastefully decorated with marine panels 
by Samuel Scott, who afterwards became his 
neighbour at Twickenham. Another was a 
twelve-oared barge of his own design, capable 
of being propelled with great velocity by the 
very casual crew of villagers whom he has bur- 
lesqued in one of his poems. But his capital 
achievement was an adaptation of that * flying 
proa ' of the Malay Archipelago, which plays so 



4 



*' Cambridge, the Everything,'' 183 

conspicuous a part in Byron's ' Island,' and 
which Anson vainly endeavoured to introduce 
into England from the Ladrones. The Cam- 
bridge variation consisted of two boats, fifty 
feet long, and twelve feet apart, secured to each 
other by transverse beams covered in with a slight 
platform or deck. This, from all accounts, was 
a great success, and was doubtless duly com- 
mended by Frederick, Prince of Wales, when 
he visited Whitminster with Lord Bathurst. 
Next to boating Cambridge's chief pastime was 
shooting. But here again his sport in no wise 
resembled Squire Western's, since his favourite 
weapon was not a fowling-piece but a bow and 
arrow, in the use of which he had grown so ex- 
pert that — like the Aster who shot at Philip of 
Macedon — he could bring down a bird upon 
the wing. Finding, however, by chance, that 
this pastime was not without its perils to out- 
siders, he changed his quarry, and practised on 
fish, using ' arrows made for that purpose by 
the Indians of America.' His collections in this 
way — for he was already a collector — were 
coloured by his tastes, and his bows of all 
nations ultimately found an honoured home in 
the long vanished Leverian museum — we beg 
pardon, Holophusikon — at Leicester House. ^ 

^ Sir Ashton Lever was also an archer, who apparently 
lived up to the character. When Fanny Burney visited 



184 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

There is another respect in which Cambridge 
materially differed from Squire Western. But 
this, for the moment, we may reserve. The 
above were his main occupations. His leisure, 
when he had any, was given to letters, which he 
quitted and resumed with the facile irresponsi- 
bility of the amateur. Several of his traits are 
touched in some of those easy octosyllabics of 
his day which were addressed to him by White- 
head — William, not Paul: — 

* That Cassar did three things at once. 
Is known at school to every dunce ; 
But your more comprehensive mind 
Leaves piddling Caesar far behind. 
You spread the lawn, direct the flood, 
Cut vistas through, or plant a wood, 
Build China's barks for Severn's stream. 
Or form new plans for epic fame, 
And then in spite of wind or weather, 
You read, row, ride, and write together.' 

At the time this epistle was written, the ' Scrib- 
leriad,' Cambridge's chief metrical work, must 

him in December, 1782, she found him ' accoutred as a for- 
ester,' and 'prancing about* with bow and arrows, in a 
green jacket and a round hat with green feathers — a cos- 
tume which recalls the famous 7?/^ champitre at Mrs. Leo 
Hunter's. He was accompanied by two young men in 
similar garb ('Diary, etc., of Madame D'Arblay,' 1892, 
»• 495)- 



" Cambridge, the Everything" 185 

have been either actually completed, or in a fair 
way to be completed, for it is specifically men- 
tioned by the writer. But — 

' that unexhausted vein, 
That quick conception without pain/ 

with which Whitehead goes on to credit his ver- 
satile friend, must have been somewhat inter- 
mittent in its operation, for the poem was 
evidently a considerable time upon the stocks. 
It is difficult, indeed, to say exactly when it was 
really begun or ended, since, in 1744, Mr. 
Berkeley writes of 'your " Scribleriad " ' as 
already existent, yet two years later the author 
is still speaking of his task as if it were in pro- 
gress. This is plain from a pleasant little imi- 
tation of Horace to his book (Ep. i. 20), which 
closes thus — 

* Should any one desire to hear a 
Precise description of your ^Era, 
Tell 'em that you was on the anvil, 
When Bath came into pow'r with Granville. 
When they came in you were about, 
And not quite done when they went out.' 

The reference here is to the brief three days' 
administration of Lords Granville and Bath in 
February, 1746, and though sportive in its note, 
proves that even at that time the ' Scribleriad ' 



1 86 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

was not ready for press. Besides this, there is 
a story that, because a friend had commended 
the manner rather than the matter of the per- 
formance, the poet, who (like Browning) at- 
tached most importance to the ' weighty sense,' 
concluded he had failed, and threw his work 
aside for several years. The probability is that 
it was written by instalments at Whitminster, 
and then retouched during the author's two 
years' stay in town, when he had fuller oppor- 
tunities for obtaining critical opinions. Finally, 
Dodsley published Book I. as a shilling pamphlet 
in January, 175 1, with an 'elegant [but singu- 
larly unpleasant] frontispiece ' by Dr. Wall, en- 
graved by L. B. Boitard. In February followed 
Book II., and by the middle of the year the 
whole was in the hands of the public. 

What shall be said to-day of a quarto burlesque 
poem in six parts, which, albeit equipped with 
all the apparatus of argument and footnote, re- 
quires the additional assistance of an explanatory 
preface, and — according to the first reviews — 
an antecedent study of Pope's ' Memoirs of 
Scriblerus ' 1 In the preface referred to, which 
was an afterthought, and is not by any means 
the worst part of the work, the author sets forth 
at some length his theory of mock-heroic. His 
models, he explains, have been ' Don Quixote ' 



*^ Cambridge i the Everything.'' 187 

and the ' Battle of the Books ' rather than the 
* Lutrin ' or the ' Rape of the Lock ; ' and his 
object is ridicule of the false taste and false 
science of his age. ,His hero is the hero of 
Pope and Arbuthnot, taken up where those 
worthies left him, and launched upon a succes- 
sion of fresh adventures, calculated to satirize, 
inter alia, the worship of the ancients, the vanity 
of pedantry, and the folly of alchemy. These 
bring him into relations with petrified cities, 
Surinam toads, mummies, six-legged oxen, Sortes 
Virgiliance, people who row — not upon, but 
under the water — and so forth. Here — as a 
sample of the verse — is a description of some 
of the inhabitants of a ' Poetic Land ' at which 
the traveller arrives in Book IL, and from which 
he wisely takes flight as soon as possible. They 
are fluent enough to leave one in agreement 
with that earlier critic of the manuscript who 
preferred the execution to the theme — 

* To join these squadrons, o'er the champain came 
A numerous race of no ignoble name; 
The mighty Crambo leads th' intrepid van : 
The rest a forward loud industrious clan. 
Riddle, and Rebus, RiddWs dearest son ; 
And false Conundrum, and insidious Pun ; 
Fustian, who scarcely deigns to tread the ground ; 
And Rondeau, wheeling in repeated round. 



1 88 Eighteenth Century yignettes. 

Here the Rhopalics i in a wedge are drawn, 
There the proud Macaronians scour the lawn. 
Here fugitive and vagrant o'er the green, 
The wanton Lipogrammatist is seen. 
There Quibble and Antithesis appear, 
With Doggrel-rhymes and Ecchoes in the rear. 

On their fair standards, by the wind displayed, 
Eggs, Altars, Wings, Pipes, Axes were pourtray'd : ' — 

in all of which, without the footnote, the eigh- 
teenth-century student will detect the recollec- 
tion of certain essays by Addison on artificial 
forms of verse. Mr. Cambridge comments upon 
the improprieties of Pope and Boileau in making 
Belles and Booksellers consult oracles, offer 
sacrifices, and apostrophize the heathen gods ; 
but a not-too-carping critic may also confess to 
a difficulty in realizing a regiment of personified 
Rhopalics even though they should be escorted 
by a squadron of ' wanton Lipogrammatists.' In 

1 Mr. Cambridge's definition of Rhopalics xoAy be given 
as a specimen of his learned annotations : * Rhopalic verses 
begin with a monosyllable, and continue in words growing 
gradually longer to the last, which must be the longest 
of all. 

Rem regent regimen regionem. religionem. 

They had their name from ^6ira\ov, a Club, which like 
them begins with a slender tip, and grows bigger and 
bigger to the head. Hence our author draws them up 
with great propriety, in the military form of a wedge.' 



*' Cambridge, the Everything:' 189 

departing from this favoured region Scriblerus is 
unfortunate enough to shoot one of the ' bold 
Acrostics ' with his bow. . . . But it is needless 
to analyze what none would read. Doubtless, 
for such as * observingly distil them out,' there 
are — as in Garth and the rest — many clever 
imitations of passages from the classics, and the 
notes unquestionably display a wide range of 
miscellaneous reading. Those, however, who, 
in its own day, delighted in its ingenuities 
(among whom must be reckoned the erudite 
author of the ' Pursuits of Literature ') must ob- 
viously have taken pleasure in a kind of learned 
trifling which is now no longer in vogue. 

By the time the ' Scribleriad ' was published 
the author had for some time quitted Whit- 
minster. About 1748, the death of his uncle 
considerably increased his means, and he trans- 
ferred his residence to London, mainly with a 
view to be near a friend he had often visited 
from Gloucestershire, Mr. Villiers, afterwards 
Earl of Clarendon. But two years later he pur- 
chased a house upon the Thames, in which he 
continued to reside for the remainder of his long 
life. It was pleasantly situated in the then open 
Twickenham Meadows, not far from Richmond 
Bridge, and in the vicinity both of Lady Suffolk's 
historic Marble Hill, and Twickenham Park 



igo Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

House, at that time Lord Mountrath's. Here 
he amused himself, much as he had done at 
Whitminster, by planting and improving his 
grounds, winning thereby the commendation of 
the celebrated ' Capability ' Brown, and by enter- 
taining the persons of distinction who lived in the 
vicinity, or visited it periodically from London. 
Horace Walpole was already his neighbour, and 
it is sometimes (erroneously) asserted that he 
was acquainted with Pope. But this is a demon- 
strable mistake, for in 175 1 Pope had been dead 
about seven years. Cambridge, it is true, had 
been in indirect communication with Twicken- 
ham's greatest resident, since, through Thomas 
Edwards, he had supplied for Pope's grotto some 
of that sparkling mundic or iron pyrites from 
Severn side with which he had already beautified 
a similar cavern or recess of his own at Whit- 
minster.^ In default of Pope, however, he had 
many guests whose names are still remembered. 
Lord Granville, Lord Mansfield, Lord Chester- 
field, Lord Bath, and Mr. Pitt were among his 
London friends. To these were added, now or 
after. Lord North, Lord Hardwicke and his 
famous son-in-law Lord Anson, Admiral Bos- 

1 * Some large Pieces of Gold Clift, from Mr, Cam- 
bridge in Gloucestershire,' are duly chronicled in John 
Serle's ' Plan of Mr. Pope's Garden,' 1745, p. 8. 



*' Cambridge, the Everything.^* 191 

cawen and Captain Cook, ' Hermes,' Harris and 
Johnson, Reynolds and Garrick ; and these were 
a few only of the visitors who met continually 
round a board which was always spread with an 
ample but unostentatious hospitality. As a book- 
lover, Mr. Cambridge possessed a considerable 
library, which, as might be anticipated from his 
tastes, was exceptionally rich in voyages and 
travels ; and it was from his collection that 
Horace Walpole derived the manuscript of one 
of the earliest of the Strawberry issues — Lord 
Whitworth's interesting ' Account of Russia in 
1710.' Another hobby which Cambridge con- 
trived to gratify while at Twickenham was a taste 
for pictures, of which he left a carefully chosen 
gallery, acquired, according to his son and biog- 
rapher, ' at a comparatively small expense,' 
owing mainly to his sound knowledge and well- 
trained judgment in art. 

Although, like Montaigne, a literary man only 
' lors qu'une trop lasche oysifvete lui pressait,' 
he continued, at Twickenham, to amuse himself 
in verse and prose. Early in 1753, Dodsley es- 
tablished the ' World,' with the fabulist Edward 
Moore for editor. Lord Lyttelton introduced 
Moore to Cambridge, with the result that, 
after Moore himself, and Lord Chesterfield, 
Cambridge became the most regular of the con- 



192 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

tributors, the list of which, in addition, included 
Walpole, Soame Jenyns, Lord Bath, Francis 
Coventry of ' Pompey the Little,' Hamilton 
Boyle, and Sir Charles Hanbury Williams. 
Cambridge's first contribution was not made 
until No. 5O5 and the bulk of his papers belong 
to Volume IIL As in poetry he had leaned to 
satire, so in prose his tendency was to irony, 
the use of which he indeed defends in the con- 
cluding paper of the second volume. His sub- 
jects, which he treats not seldom with a facile 
sub-Addisonian raillery, turn chiefly on such 
themes as talking and listening, gormandizing, 
improving (an excellent paper) ; on landscape 
gardening (of course) ; feminine taste, the neg- 
lect of experience, and so forth, all of which he 
handles with that * gentle and good-humoured 
ridicule ' to which he makes his claim. Once 
he deviates into ambling octosyllabics, which he 
writes, if not as well as Prior, certainly not 
worse than Whitehead. Here is the conclusion, 
filled with pleasant last century detail, of a little 
piece that illustrates the not-yet-extinct pursuit 
of the inopportune. From the last couplet but 
one of this passage it will be seen that his pro- 
nunciation of ' china ' differed from ours : — 

* And yet, for all he holds this rule, 
Damoetas is in fact no fool : 



** Cambridge y the Everything." 193 

For he would hardly chuse a groom 

To make his chairs or hang his room ; 

Nor with th' upholsterer discourse 

About the glanders in his horse ; 

Nor send to buy his wife a tete 

To Puddle-Dock or Billingsgate ; . . . 

Nor bid his coachman drive o' nights 

To parish-church instead of White's ; 

Nor make his party or his bets 

With those who never pay their debts ; 

Nor at desert of wax and china 

Neglect the eatables, if any, 

To smell the chaplet in the middle, 

Or taste the Chelsea-china fiddle.' 

The repetition of the word ' china ' (or 
* chaney ') in the last lines suggests an inevitable 
criticism of these papers, from which, by their 
very nature, it is not easy to make quotation. 
They are the work of a writer who is at once a 
wit, a pleasant talker, and a scholar * conven- 
iently learned,' but they have also, in their 
lack of construction and indefinite message, 
most of the characteristics of amateur effort. 
This is, no doubt, the main defect of many of 
the unpaid contributions to Dodsley's ven- 
ture. No social periodical was probably ever 
started with a staff better qualified to fill the 
editorial programme. But in those days, to 
write for money was thought to be beneath 
the dignity of a person of quality, and the 

13 



194 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

papers of Chesterfield and Cambridge and 
Horace Walpole, who, after Moore himself, 
wrote most industriously, were, at the best, 
' gift horses.' And without going to the length 
of Sydney Smith's dictum that * an unpaid con- 
tributor is ex vi termini an ass,' it is plain that 
help of this nature has inherent defects which 
are opposed to the production of enduring litera- 
ture. It is difficult to decline a voluntary con- 
tribution from a writer of distinction if it is not 
as good as usual ; it is still more difficult to edit 
it if it is unsuitable. Thus it comes about that 
the * World,' written, as it was, ' by gentlemen 
for gentlemen,' and written, moreover by those 
who might fairly be supposed to be especially 
familiar with their subject, has scarcely con- 
tinued as interesting as its humbler contempo- 
rary, the ' Connoisseur ' of Colman and Bonneli 
Thornton. 

The verses from which we have quoted appear 
to have been the only metrical effort which Cam- 
bridge supplied to the pages of ' Mr. Adam Fitz- 
Adam.' But a number of imitations of the classics, 
and other occasional pieces, are printed by his 
son as having been written at Twickenham, 
some of which are included in the sixth volume 
of Dodsley's collection. One of these, ' The 
Fable of Jotham,' adapted to borough-hunting, 



" Cambridge, the Everything,'' 195 

happily recalls the cantering measure of Prior's 
' Down Hall:' — 

* Tho' much they discoursed, the long way to beguile, 

Of the earthquakes, the Jews, and the change of the stile, 
Of the Irish, the stocks, and the lott'ry committee, 
They came silent and tir'd into Exeter city.* 

And again — almost directly suggesting Prior's 
scene at the Bull at Hoddesdon. Says the 
host : — 

* I never was ask'd for a book by a guest ; 
And I 'm sure I have all the great folk in the West. 
None of these to my knowledge e'er call'd for a book ; 
But see, Sir, the woman with fish, and the cook ; 
Here 's the fattest of carp, shall we dress you a brace ? 
Would you have any soals, or a mullet, or plaice ? ' 

Another of Cambridge's poems in Dodsley is 
a parody of Pope's ' Eloisa to Abelard,' entitled 

* An Elegy written in an Empty Assembly- 
Room ; ' and a third — addressed * To Mr. 
Whitehead, on his being made Poet Laureat' — 
opens thus : — 

* 'Tis so — tho' we 're surpriz'd to hear itj 
The laurel, is bestow'd on merit. 
How hush'd is ev'ry envious voice ! 
Confounded by so just a choice, 
Tho' by prescriptive right prepar'd 
To libel the selected bard,' 



196 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

— sentiments which, if the writer be not indulg- 
ing his favourite vein of irony, seem to indicate 
a serenity in the poetical atmosphere of 1758 to 
which our modern meteorologists are strangers. 
But the best of Cambridge's verse, to our think- 
ing, is a clever modernization of Horace (Satire 
ix. bk. i), under the title of ^ The Intruder,' — 
the Sic me servavit Apollo of the close being 
supplied by the fact that the mob in those 
anti-Jew Bill days mistake the Bore for an 
Israelite, and fall upon him accordingly. It 
is scarcely fair to praise it without giving a 
sample. Here is the paraphrase of the Maecenas 
episode : 

* Deaf to my words, he talks along 

Still louder than the buzzing throng. 
" Are you," he cries, " as well as ever 

With Lady Grace ? she 's vastly clever ? " 

Her merit all the world declare ; 

Few, very few her friendship share. 
" If you'd contrive to introduce 

Your friend here, you might find an use . . .** 

Sir, in that house there 'j tto such doings 

And the attempt would be one's ruin. 

No artf no project^ no designing ; 

No rivalship and no outshining. 
" Indeed ! you make me long the more 

To get admittance. Is the door 

Kept by so rude, so hard a clown. 

As will not melt at half-a-crown ? 



" Cambridge y the Everything'' 197 

Can't I cajole the female tribe 
And gain her woman with a bribe ? 
Refused to-day, suck up my sorrow, 
And take my chance again to-morrow? 
Is there no shell-work to be seen, 
Or Chinese chair or Indian screen ? 
No cockatoo nor marmozet, 
Lap-dog, gold-fish, nor perroquet ? 
No French embroidery on a quilt ? 
And no bow-window to be built ? 
Can't I contrive, at times, to meet 
My lady in the park or street ? 
At opera, play, or morning pray'r, 
To hand her to her coach or chair ? " 

But now his voice, tho' late so loud, 
Was lost in the contentious crowd 
Of fishwives newly corporate, 
A colony from Billingsgate.' 

The most considerable literary result of Cam- 
bridge's Twickenham residence, however, is not 
poetry, but prose. He was deeply interested in 
Indian affairs, and conceived the idea of tracing 
the rise and progress of British power in the 
East. Part of his work, the history of the war 
upon the coast of Coromandel, was published 
rather hurriedly, in 1762, when the interest in 
the subject was at its height, and, though more 
of a compilation than he had at first intended, 
was highly appreciated, especially by the French, 
for its justice and accuracy. Then Colonel 



198 Eighteenth Century t^ignettes 

Newcome's historian, Orme, arrived from India, 
and Orme's more extensive material and oppor- 
tunities made the further progress of Cambridge's 
plan superfluous. Yet his labours in the field 
were not without their fruit, since they brought 
him into intimate relations with Carnac, Scrafton, 
Pearson, Clive, Warren Hastings, and many 
others of the more prominent actors in that 
stirring Asiatic drama. 

With Cook to talk of Otaheite, and Clive of 
Surajah Dowlah, with the bons mots of Walpole 
and the epigrams of Chesterfield, there must 
have been good company round the Twicken- 
ham table, and one naturally turns to the letters 
of Cambridge's old schoolfellows for some 
traces of these nodes cxnceque deorum. But, 
in this respect, neither Gray nor Walpole is 
particularly helpful, and one is left with a haunt- 
ing suspicion that Cambridge was a little too 
like the writers to obtain strict justice at their 
hands. Gray's solitary reference to Cambridge 
is to accuse him of being more alive to the blots 
than the beauties of Clarendon's * Life ; ' and 
Walpole, who seems always to write with a 
certain soreness (which may be due to the fact 
that Cambridge had dared to make addition to 
the 'Heroic Epistle'), generally lays stress 
upon his neighbour's activity as a gossip. ' He 



" Cambridge, the Everything." 199 

(Cambridge) would tell anybody the most dis- 
agreeable news rather than not be the first to 
trumpet it,' he says in one place ; and in another 
he complains that in * untittle-tattling ' Twicken- 
ham (surely a most inappropriate adjective for a 
village inhabited by himself ! ) ' the grass would 
grow in their ears ' if Mr. Cambridge ' did not 
gallop the roads for intelligence.' Nevertheless, 
when Colman put Cambridge into ' The Mana- 
ger in Distress ' as a ' Newsmonger, who lives 
about twelve miles from town,'^ he is generous 
enough to speak of him as ' so benevolent and 
inoffensive a man, that his little foible does not 
deserve such treatment ; ' and there is always 
an aspect of piquancy in the idea of Walpole's 
objection to scandal, seeing that he is an arch- 
master of the craft. Such other references to 

1 Colman, who lived at Richmond, had a local grudge 
against Cambridge. There is no doubt that he satirized 
him as Bustleton. * He is known among his friends and 
acquaintance by the name of the Riding Magazine ; he 
lives above a dozen miles out of town, but dotes upon 
London ; comes up on a hard trot every day after break- 
fast, stops every friend he meets to receive and communi- 
cate intelligence, and inquires after news from the men 
at the turnpikes, nay, sometimes, to hold himself in wind, 
tells the keeper of the gate at Kensington what he learnt 
from the toll-gatherer at Hammersmith ' ('The Manager 
in Distress,' a Prelude, 1780, p. 4). 



200 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

Cambridge as can be traced are more unquali- 
fied. Miss Burney, who met both father and 
son at Mrs. Thrale's, was delighted with them; 
and Boswell, of course, is ecstatic. He gives 
a long account of a dinner at Cambridge House 
to which he went in 1775 with Johnson, in 
Reynolds's coach, and though it is Johnson first 
and the rest nowhere in the conversational 
record, he dwells upon the elegance of the 
entertainment and the accomplishments of the 
family. Moreover, he evidently marked this 
special occasion with a white stone, for several 
years later, dpropos of some ' Johnsoniana' sent 
him by Cambridge (then, of course, still alive), 
he refers to him as a senex foriunatus, descants 
upon his excellent library, ' which he accurately 
knows and reads,' his choice pictures, ' which 
he understands and relishes,' his friends, his 
literary celebrity, and his rare ' colloquial 
talents.' 

Ah I those evasive, those irrecoverable * col- 
loquial talents ' I The posthumous reputation 
of a talker is like the posthumous reputation 
of an actor: much must be taken on trust. 
Lord Ossory thought that his brother, Gen- 
eral Richard Fitzpatrick, was a far greater wit 
than either Selwyn or Horace Walpole ; and 
Lady Holland, as good a judge, would probably 



if 



Cambridge, the Everything.'' 201 



have endorsed this opinion.^ And yet, beyond 
the couplet in ' Dorinda ' — 

* And oh ! what Bliss, when each alike is pleas'd, 

The Hand that squeezes, and the Hand that 's squeezed ' — 

who can recall a single bon mot of this brilliant 
General Richard Fitzpatrick ? What is worse, 
out of three witticisms that your departed diseur 
leaves behind him — and those not always his 
best — two at least are generally attributed to 
some rival practitioner. Whether Cambridge 
has suffered in this way we know not, but, in 
any case, for one who — as Walpole said — 
generally told three stories to explain a fourth, 
he has left but a slender legacy of anecdote. 
Here are two of his sayings, each of which 
oddly enough turns upon his favourite recrea- 
tion. Some one had said of his friend Lord 
Anson, who had the reputation of losing at play, 
that he was a beggar. Cambridge, after vainly 
dissenting, undertook to prove logically that he 
was not. Beggars, he postulated, could ride, 
whereas anyone who looked at Lord Anson on 

^ ' General Fitzpatrick was at one time nearly as fa- 
mous for his wit as Hare ' (' Rogers's Table Talk/ 1856, 
p. 104). James Hare is another forgotten wit and friend 
of Fox, to whom Lord Ossory favourably compared his 
brother. 



202 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

horseback must be convinced that he was an 
excellent seaman. The other records that late 
in life George III. met him at Richmond, and 
observed that * he did not ride so fast as he 
used to do.' 'Sir,' answered Cambridge, ' I 
am going down hill' — which was true in a 
double sense. For the rest, he was in the 
habit of declaring that he deserved infinitely 
more credit for the good things he had sup- 
pressed than for anything witty he might have 
said. This may fairly be opposed to Walpole's 
obiter dictum as to his propensity to disagree- 
able communications — the more especially as 
it is corrobated by Lord Chesterfield, a far less 
prejudiced judge than either Gray or his friend, 
and quite as likely to be well informed. * Can- 
TABRiGius,' wrote his lordship in the * World ' 
for 3rd October, 17^4, ' drinks nothing but 
water [this is the other little difference from 
Squire Western alluded to at the beginning of 
this paper], and rides more miles in a year than 
the keenest sportsman, and with almost equal 
velocity. The former keeps his head clear ; 
the latter, his body in health. It is not from 
himself that he runs, but to his acquaintances, a 
synonymous term for his friends. Internally 
safe, he seeks no sanctuary from himself, no 
intoxication for his mind. His penetration 



'■' Cambridge, the Everything." 203 

makes him discover, and divert himself with the 
follies of mankind, which his wit enables him to 
expose with the truest ridicule, though always 
without personal offence.' (The words we have 
italicized, it will be noted, are in direct opposi- 
tion to Walpole.) After this may come his own 
description of himself in the little paraphrase of 
Horace ' Ad Librum Suum,' from which citation 
has already been made — 

* Thus much of me you may declare, 
That tho' I live in Country air, 
And with a snug retirement blest, 
Yet oft, impatient of my nest, 
I spread my broad and ample wing, 
And in the midst of action spring. 
A great admirer of great men. 
And much by them admir'd again. 
My body light, my figure slim, 
My mind dispos'd to mirth and whim : 
Then on my Family hold forth. 
Less fam*d for Quality than Worth. 
But let not all these points divert you 
From speaking largely of my Virtue.* 

This last, of course, is playfully said. There 
can, however, be little doubt that those who 
knew him best would have willingly allowed 
that, in addition to being widely gifted, he was 
well-meaning and kindly, devoted to his family 
and friends, sincerely religious, and sociable 



204 Eighteenth Century yignettes, 

and hospitable in the best old-world acceptation 
of the words. If, instead of a couple of notes 
to Mary Berry, he had left a correspondence, 
it might, with his gifts and opportunities, have 
rivalled that of Walpole, at all events in mate- 
rial. But he was content to be no more than 
one of those plain English gentlemen, 'un- 
encumbered by rank and easy in fortune,' whom 
George III. rightly regarded as among the most 
enviable of humanity. 

It remains to say of * Cantabrigius ' that he 
attained to an honoured old age, dying at last in 
September, 1802. He was then eighty-six. 
His wife, for whom he had always been a lover 
rather than a husband, survived him for four 
years, when she too departed, in her ninetieth 
year. There is a tablet to both in Twickenham 
Church, under that of Pope. 



THE OFFICINA ARBUTEANA. 

TN July, 1757, when Horace Walpole first 
-*- turned printer, he had been ten years an 
occupant of Strawberry Hill. Since he had 
bought it in 1747, out of the shop of Mrs. 
Chevenix, the Charing Cross toy-woman, the 
tiny country box originally built by the Earl of 
Bradford's coachman, had been pinnacled and 
embattled and Gothicized out of all knowledge. 
Ten years of trees which ' sprouted away like 
any chaste nymph in the "Metamorphosis'" 
had given a sylvan appearance to the bare 
meadow-land which is shown in John Rocque's 
plan of 1 741-5, and already the proprietor could 
enjoy in full perfection his favourite combina- 
tion — ' lilacs and nightingales.' It is true that 
the ambitious extensions of later years were as 
yet undreamed of, but a refectory and library 
had nevertheless been added ; and although, as 
always, the ' extreme littleness ' of the house 
was incontestable, it was not without its genu- 
ine admirers. * It has a purity and propriety of 
Gothicism in it (says Gray in 1754, now recon- 



2o6 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

ciled to his old comrade of the Grand Tour) 
that I have not seen elsewhere ; ' and it seems 
that Thomas Wharton shared his sentiments. 
Something of this, no doubt, was due to the 
glorious situation, which even that ' simple old 
Phobus,' Lord Radnor, could not entirely spoil 
by his preposterous * Mabland.' But when one 
reads the depreciatory epithets which were 
spent on the Twickenham castle by the critics 
of the last century, it may be as well to remem- 
ber that Gray and Wharton praised it, and 
apparently praised it in good faith. 

To defend or to describe Walpole's museum 
of curiosities, is not, however, so much the 
purpose of this paper as to give some brief 
account of the work of the Officina Arbuteana^ 
or Private Press at Strawberry Hill. What 
first suggested its establishment is obscure. It 
may have had its origin with Walpole's book- 
seller, William Bathoe, to whose inventive 
genius London is said to owe, if not the first, 
at least one of the first of its circulating libra- 
ries ; ^ or it may have been suggested by one of 

1 In 1740, at No. 132, Strand. Professor Masson, in 
*Chatterton' ('Essays,' 1856, p. 212), makes Bathoe the 
first. But this distinction is also claimed for Samuel 
Fancourt, a Dissenting Minister of Crane Court, Fleet 
Street, who established a lending library there circa 1740 
(' Gentleman's Magazine,' 1799, p. 1019). 



The Officina Arbuteana. 207 

his tenants, Richard Francklin, the quondam 
printer of the ' Craftsman.' In either case, it 
bursts upon us without premonition in a letter 
to Mr. John Chute, whose historic dwelling, 
the Vyne in Hampshire, was, not long since, 
so charmingly described by one of his descend- 
ants.^ * On Monday next [14*^ »July],' says 
Walpole,^ ' the Officina Arbuteana opens in form. 
The Stationers' Company, that is, Mr. Dodsley, 
Mr. Tonson, etc. , are summoned to meet here on 
Sunday night . . . Elzevir, Aldus, and Stephens,' 
he goes on, ^ are the freshest personages in my 
memory. Unless I was appointed printer of 
the Gazette, I think nothing could at present 
make me read an article in it.' Later still, the 
news goes to his correspondent Mann, at Flor- 
ence. * I am turned printer,' he says, * and 
have converted a little cottage here into a print- 
ing-office.' And then he proceeds to describe 
his printer, William Robinson, a personage with 
noticeable eyes that Garrick envies (' they are 
more Richard the Third's than Garrick's own,' 
says Horace), and with an Irish head and pen. 

1 « A History of the Vyne,' 1888, by the late Chaloner 
W. Chute. 

2 As a matter of fact it does not seem to have opened 
until Wednesday, i6th July (see letter to George Mon- 
tagu of that date). 



2o8 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

From a curious high-flown letter of Robinson, 
which Walpole transcribes for Mann's amuse- 
ment, it appears that he was ' sole manager and 
operator.' 

It had been intended to commence proceed- 
ings with a translation by Richard Bentley the 
younger, then Walpole's guest, of Paul Hentz- 
ner's Journey into England in 1598. But just 
at this time Gray had brought his two odes, 
'The Bard ' and ' The Progress of Poesy,' up 
to London to be printed. * I snatched them 
out of Dodsley's hands,' says Walpole,' ' and 
they are to be the first fruits of my press.' 
Gray seems to have consented, but reluctantly. 
"Walpole ' was so earnest to handsel his Twick- 
enham press with this new pamphlet,' he tells 
Mason, ' that it was impossible to find a pre- 
tence for refusing such a trifle. You will dis- 
like this as much as I do, but there is no help ; 
you understand, it is he that prints them, not 
for me, but for Dodsley.' Accordingly, on the 
8th of August, appeared in a thin shilling quarto 
of twenty-one pages, ' Odes by Mr. Gray. 
^(jivavra <Tvv€Toi(TL — Pindar, Olymp. II. Printed 
at Strawberry-Hill, for R. and J. Dodsley in 
Pall-Mall, 1757.' Upon the title-page was 
' Walpole's device, a graceful little vignette of 
Strawberry in its earlier form, framed in a 



The Offlcina Arbuteana. 209 

design of leaf and flower-work, and bearing on 
a ribbon in one corner his motto, Fari quce 
sentiat. The book, notwithstanding the charge 
of obscurity, and Gray's obstinate refusal to 
annotate it sufficiently (there were only a few 
brief notes), had a considerable success. A 
large number of the 1,000 copies printed were 
sold in two months, and the part therein of 
* Elzevir Horace,' as Conway christened his 
friend, was not forgotten.^ 

Hentzner's * Journey into England in the 
Year 1598,' was the next production. It was 
a small octavo, dated 17^7, with an advertise- 
ment of ten pages by Walpole, to 103 double 
pages of English and Latin, the translation from 
the latter language being, as already stated, by 
Bentley. The issue was limited to 220 copies, 
and it was printed in October, with a Dedica- 
tion to the Society of Antiquaries, of which 
body, at this date, Walpole was a member. 
After this, in April, 17^8, came the 'Catalogue 
of the Royal and Noble Authors of England,' 
in two volumes, octavo ; to which followed 200 

1 One of the rarer leaflets issued from the Press was a 
complimentary poem of six quatrains (24 lines), addressed 
to Gray on his Odes, by David Garrick, of which only 
six copies are supposed to have been struck off. One of 
these is in the Dyce Collection at South Kensington. 

14 



2IO Eighteenth Century Fignettes, 

copies of ' Fugitive Pieces in Verse and Prose,* 
a collection including Walpole's early poems, 
his papers in Moore's 'World,' and several 
miscellaneous pieces. It bore the motto Pere- 
unt et imputantur, and was dedicated to the 
author's life-long friend, Major-General Henry 
Seymour Conway. Although, as the title-page 
announces, it was 'printed at Strav\^berry-Hill, 
1758,' it does not seem to have been issued 
until March, 17^9, when — according to Wal- 
pole's 'Short Notes of my Life' — he began to 
distribute copies to his friends.^ Next came 
another octavo, ' An Account of Russia as it 
was in the year 17 10,' by Charles, Lord Whit- 
worth. Of this, an extremely interesting volume, 
700 copies were printed in 1758; and early in 
the next year (February 2nd) was issued, with 
the motto Parvis componere magna, a little book 
by Walpole's friend, Joseph Spence, entitled 
' A Parallel ; in the Manner of Plutarch : be- 
tween a most celebrated Man of Florence 
[Magliabecchi] ; and One, scarce ever heard 

^ Gray got one of these, which is in the Forster Col- 
lection at South Kensington. * This Book (says a MS. 
inscription) once belonged to Gray the Poet, and has his 
autograph on the Title-page. I [i. e., George Daniel, of 
Canonbury] bought it at Messrs. Sotheby and Wilkinson's 
Sale Rooms for £1 igs. on Thursday 28 Augt 1851, from 
the valuable collection of Mr. Penn of Stoke.' 



The Offlcina Arhuteana, 211 

of, in England.' Robert Hill, a self-educated 
tailor of Buckingham, is the second of the 
persons mentioned, and the book was issued 
for his benefit, an end which must have been 
attained, as 600 copies were sold by the pub- 
lishers, the ' Messieurs Dodsley, at Tully's- 
Head/ in a fortnight, and the volume was 
re-issued in London. 

On the title-page it is described as ' Printed 
at Strawberry Hill, by William Robinson.' It 
must have been one of the last — if not actually 
the last — of the performances of Robinson of 
the remarkable eyes, for in March of the fol- 
lowing year Walpole, whose temper, as Scott 
says, was ' precarious,' had found out that his 
Phoenix was ' a foolish Irishman, who took 
himself for a genius,' and they had parted. At 
the date of his making this announcement to 
the Rev. Henry Zouch the press was at a stand- 
still. From the ' List of the Books printed at 
Strawberry Hill,' the next important issue was 
Lucan's ' Pharsalia,' edited by Bentley. It 
was published in 1761 and dated 1760, Not- 
withstanding the difficulties attending its appear- 
ance, it is held to be one of the most beautiful 
volumes ever issued by Walpole. Bentley re- 
linquished his duties before it was completed, 
and the task of superintending its publication, 



212 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

to which Walpole's scholarship was scarcely 
equal, was undertaken by the editor's relative, 
Richard Cumberland, the dramatist, perhaps 
better remembered now as Sheridan's ' Sir Fret- 
ful Plagiary.' During its progress Walpole had 
been actively engaged on another and more im- 
portant work with which he was directly con- 
nected. In 1758 he had purchased from the 
widow of George Vertue, the engraver, forty 
manuscript volumes of notes relating to English 
painters, sculptors, gravers, and architects.^ 
Vertue, who died in 17^, had in some cases 
begun their lives, but he had made little prog- 
ress, and his literary attainments were of a very 
elementary kind. In September, 17^9, accord- 
ing to his autobiographical notes, Walpole com- 
menced to look over this mass of material, 
with a view to prepare it for publication. He 
chronicles his progress as follows. He began 
to write in January, 1760, and finished the first 
volume on August 14th. On September ^th, 
he began the second volume, and on January 
4th, 1 76 1, the third. This he laid aside after 

1 ' Mr. Vertue's Manuscripts, in 28 vols.' — were sold 
at the sale of Rare Prints and Illustrated Works from the 
Strawberry Hill Collection, on June 21, 1842, for £26 10 s,, 
being lot mo. Walpole says in the * Short Notes' that 
he paid ;i{rioo. The MSS. are now in the British Museum. 



The Officina Arhuteana, 213 

the first day, not resuming it until the end of 
June. In August, however, he finished it ; and 
early in 1762, 600 copies of the first two volumes 
were published — the third being withheld until 
1764. In August of 1762 he began, also from 
Vertue's material, a ' Catalogue of Engravers, 
who have been born, or resided in England,* 
To this, which he finished in October, and also 
published in 1764, he added an account of 
Vertue's Life and Works. In the following 
year he issued a second edition of the whole, 
and five years later still he printed a fourth and 
final volume, the publication of which, from a 
desire not to wound too many susceptibilities, 
was delayed until 1780. The ' Anecdotes of 
Painting,' is the most considerable effort of the 
Strawberry Hill Press, if not of Walpole's en- 
tire literary productions. Most of the research, 
often of a special and recondite kind, was done 
to his hand (as, indeed, he cheerfully acknowl- 
edges), and his own duty was mainly confined 
to systematizing, selecting, and generally deco- 
rating Vertue's chaotic memoranda. These 
conditions were entirely favourable to his lit- 
erary habit of mind, and the ' Anecdotes of 
Painting,' especially in the Wornum's three- 
volume edition of 1839 are still worthy of re- 
spect. Besides this work, the only other issues 



214 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

from the press previous to 1768 were a ' Life 
of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury, written 
by Himself (1764), a small quarto of 200 copies, 
to which Walpole prefixed an ' Advertisement * 
and * Dedication ; ' and another quarto of thirty- 
four pages, containing some dozen ' Poems by 
Anna Chamber, Countess Temple' (1764). Of 
this, which was introduced by ' commendatory 
verses ' of his own, 100 copies were struck off, 

* in a large, but not very elegant, type,' says 
Dibdin. The 'Short Notes' contain no refer- 
ence to this book, and it is probable that Wal- 
pole attached but little importance to it. 

From a letter to Zouch, the antiquary, in 
February, 1762/ in which Walpole apologizes 
for the long deferred advent of the ' Anecdotes 
of Painting,' it would appear that there was not 
at that date any recognized successor to William 
Robinson. But from references to the roguery 
of a fourth printer, which, coupled with the 

* tediousness of engravers,' has delayed the 
book ' week after week for months,' it is clear 
that candidates for the office were not wanting. 
The ' Anecdotes ' bear the name of Thomas 
Farmer, while Lord Herbert's Life, and Lady 
Temple's Poems were printed by one Prat. 
But after the appearance of the second edition 
of the first three volumes of the ' Anecdotes,' 



The Officina Arhuteana. 215 

1765, which was printed by Thomas Kirgate, a 
hush seems to have fallen on the Strawberry 
Hill Press. Neither ' The Castle of Otranto,' 
1764, nor the ' Historic Doubts on the Life 
and Reign of Richard the Third/ 1768. bore 
the Twickenham imprint ; and it is not until 
the latter year that the list contains the record 
of a fresh production. This was ' Corn^lie, 
Vestale/ a youthful tragedy by the ' decent 
friend ' of Madame du Deffand, President 
Henault, and it was undertaken by Walpole as 
an acknowledgment of the old man's kindness 
to him while in France. Only 200 copies were 
printed, i^o of which went to the French capi- 
tal. Probably this renewed activity of the 
Officina Arhuteana coincides with the per- 
manent instalment, as printer, of the already 
mentioned Kirgate, whose name is associated 
with all its subsequent issues. ' Cornelie ' was 
followed by Walpole's own dubious tragedy, 
'The Mysterious Mother' (1768), of which 
the impression was discreetly limited to fifty 
copies. Both this and the President's play 
were in octavo. After these, in 1769, came 
another octavo, ' Poems, by the Reverend Mr. 
Hoyland; ' and three years later, another of 
the Strawberry Hill rarities, the ' M^moires du 
Comte de Grammont par Monsieur le Comte 



2i6 Eighteenth Century Fignettes, 

Antoine Hamilton,' 1772, a small quarto^ ' Aug- 
ment^e de Notes & d'Eclaircissemens n^ces- 
saires ' by Walpole himself, and gracefully 
dedicated to Madame du Deffand. Of this 
100 copies were printed, thirty going as pres- 
ents to Paris. To the same year (1772) belong 
* Copies of Seven Original Letters from King 
Edward VI. to Barnaby Fitzpatrick ' (200 
copies) ; and two numbers of * Miscellane- 
ous Antiquities ; or, a Collection of Curious 
Papers, either republished from scarce Tracts, 
or now first printed from original MSS.' Of 
these last 500 copies were struck off; but, al- 
though they were announced ' to be continued 
occasionally,' they never got beyond the second 
number, which contained the life of Sir Thomas 
Wyat the elder. 

Apart from vol. iv. of the ' Anecdotes of 
Painting,' published, as already stated, in 1780, 
no considerable typographical effort succeeded 
the ' Miscellaneous Antiquities.' But to 1774 
belongs one of its most interesting issues, the 
well-known ' Description of the Villa of Hor- 
ace Walpole, youngest son of Sir Robert Wal- 
pole, Earl of Orford, at Strawberry- Hill, near 
Twickenham, with an Inventory of the Furni- 
ture, Pictures, Curiosities, etc' To this (an 
issue of 100 small and 6 large paper copies) 



The Offlcina Arbuteana. 217 

were afterwards affixed an Appendix (' Pictures 
and Curiosities added since the catalogue was 
printed'), 'Additions since the Appendix,' and 
' More Additions,' all of which are usually 
found bound up with it. A revised issue, with 
twenty-seven plates, was printed in 1784, but 
from a passage in a letter of 1787 to Lady 
Ossory, it would appear that, owing to difficul- 
ties caused by the overweening curiosity of 
some of Walpole's ' customers,' as he called the 
Strawberry sightseers, its circulation was for 
some time deferred. Other notable volumes, 
subsequent to 1772, are Lady Craven's ' Sleep- 
Walker/ 1778, a two-act comedy from the 
French of Madame du Deffand's friend, An- 
toine de Ferriol, Count de Pont de Veyle ; the 
* Letter to the Editor of the Miscellanies of 
Thomas Chatterton,' 1779, ^^ which Walpole 
vindicates himself from being the fons et origo 
mail in that unhappy tragedy ; and the ' Essai 
sur TArt des Jardins Modernes,' 1785, a version 
of Walpole's tract upon that subject, by his 
friend the Duke de Nivernais, to which the 
English text was added. Besides these, occa- 
sionally appears in booksellers' catalogues a 
volume of ' Hieroglyphic Tales,' 1785, of which 
it is said that only seven copies at most were 
printed, one of which has fetched as much as 



2i8 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

£i(). It was reproduced at Newcastle, in 
1822, for Emerson Charnley, the bookseller. 
Rarer even than the ' Hieroglyphic Tales/ 
since it is described as'^a ' surreptitious " impres- 
sion, is the ' History of Alcidalis and Zelida,' 
1789, 8vo, a translation of Voiture's fragment 
with that title. Not more than two or three 
copies of this are known, to exist. The New- 
castle book-collector, John Trotter Brockett, 
had one, which was sold with his books in 1823 ; 
Kirgate had another ; and there is a copy in the 
Dyce Collection at South Kensington. 

From the foregoing enumeration have been 
omitted a number of minor works — ' loose 
sheets of small tracts,' the list calls them — 
often difficult to date. Among these may be 
mentioned ' The Magpie and her Brood,' a 
fable from Bonaventures des P^riers, addressed, 
in 1764, to Lady Suffolk's little niece. Miss 
Henrietta Hotham ; ' Dorinda, a Town Eclogue, 
1775, by the Hon. Richard (afterwards General) 
Fitzpatrick, a younger brother of the Earl of 
Ossory ; his friend Charles James Fox's lines 
to Fulke Greville's daughter, that ' lover of the 
Whigs,' the beautiful Mrs. Crewe ; Mr. Charles 
Miller's ' Verses to the Hon. Horatio Walde- 
grave ' on the death of the Duke of Ancaster 
(to whom she was to have been married) ; Mr. 



The Offlcina Arbuteana, 219 

(afterward Sir William) Jones's ' Muse Re- 
called,' 1781, an ' Ode on the Marriage of 
Lord Althorp and the Lavinia Bingham whom 
Reynolds has immortalized in her straw hat and 
blue ribbon ; ' A Letter from the Honble. 
Thomas Walpole to the Governor and Commit- 
tee of the Treasury of the Bank of England,' 
1 78 1 ; and, lastly, ' Bishop Bonner's Ghost,' 
1789, a poem written by Hannah More while 
on a visit at Fulham to Dr. Beilby Porteus, 
Bishop of London. Of ' Bishop Bonner's 
Ghost ' there were two copies on brown paper, 
one of which was sold at the Strawberry Hill 
sale of 1842, and is still in existence ; the other 
belonged to Miss More. The rest of the 
Strawberry issues, which include a sheet of 
' Rules for obtaining a Ticket and for visiting 
the Villa of Horace Walpole,' are chiefly labels, 
title-pages, short pieces and familiar verses, sev- 
eral of which last are supposed to emanate from 
the Press itself. Of this sort there are quatrains 
to Lady Townsend, Lady Rochford, Madame 
de Boufflers, Miss Berry, and others, but they 
are, in general, of too purely occasional a char- 
acter to bear reprinting. 

Most of Walpole's visitors (as distmguished 
from his ' customers ') were invited to inspect 
the Press, which, from an aquatint by F. Jukes, 



220 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

after a sketch made in 1783 by E. Edwards, 
stood in a cottage near the farmyard at Straw- 
berry. In the foreground is Mr. Kirgate with 
some made-up type under his arm. In later 
years, when Walpole's gout grew more trouble- 
some, Kirgate acted as his secretary; and, if 
Pinkerton is to be believed, was doomed to see 
his ' modest merit supplanted ' in Lord Orford's 
will by ' intriguing impudence,' a statement which 
would be more impressive if it were a little 
more definite. But that there was some ground 
for disappointment, is plain from the ' Farewell 
Verses to the Press ' written for Kirgate in 
1797 by Silvester Harding, the Pall Mall minia- 
ture painter, in which Kirgate is made to speak 
of himself as ^ forlorn, neglected and forgot.' 
His portrait, also by Harding, and engraved by 
William Collard, is often to be found inserted 
in one or other of the Strawberry issues. Of 
these he himself possessed an unique collection, 
which was dispersed at his death in 1810. It 
included both ' Alcidalis and Zelida ' and the 
* Hieroglyphic Tales ; ' and served as the basis 
of the rare little ' Catalogue of Books, Poems, 
Tracts, and small detached Pieces, printed at 
the Press at Strawberry Hill,' afterwards com- 
piled by George Baker, the * Quisquilius * of 
Dibdin. In 181 1 an impression of this cata- 



The Offlcina Arhuteana. 221 

logue, limited to twenty copies (one of which is 
now in the British Museum), was distributed 
privately among Baker's literary friends.^ 

1 This paper first appeared in * The Library * for Oc- 
tober, 18S9. It had already been considerably revised for 
re-issue in the present volume when the writer's attention 
was attracted to Mr. H. B. Wheatley's interesting article 
upon the same theme in Part ix. of * Bibliographica ' 
(May, 1896). The world is wide enough for both per- 
formances. Mr, Wheatley gives copies of Kirgate's por- 
trait and Juke's aquatint. 



MATTHEW PRIOR. 

A MONG the treasures exhibited in the Pope 
-^~*- Loan Museum at Twickenham.^ were 
some of large-paper — those very large-paper — 
folio volumes in which the collected works of 
the author of ' The Rape of the Lock ' made 
their first imposing appearance. The * Poems ' 
of the author of ' Alma ' belong to the same 
race of bibliographical Anakims. With the 
small copy of 1718, Johnson might have knocked 
down Osborne the bookseller ; with the same 
work in its taller form, Osborne the bookseller 
might have laid prostrate the ' Great Lexicog- 
rapher' himself. It is, of a surety, one of the 
vastest volumes of verse in existence. Tried, 
as it lies before us, by the practical test which 
Macaulay applied to Nares's ' Memoirs of Bur- 
leigh,' it is found to measure about eighteen 
inches by twelve ; it weighs from nine to ten 

1 The Museum was open for a week in July and 
August, t888. The books lent included some large paper 
copies of Pope's 'Poems/ 1717 and 1735, which once be- 
longed to Michael, the brother of Martha and Teresa 
Blount, of Mapledurham. 



Matthew Prior. 223 

pounds avoirdupois ; and in handling it, one 
recalls involuntarily those complicated contor- 
tions in the throes of which, many years since, 
Mr. George du Maurier depicted the ill-fated 
student of a latter-day Edition de luxe. As one 
turns the pages of the big tome, it is still with a 
sense of surprise and incongruity. The curious 
mythological head-pieces with their muscular 
nymphs and dank-haired river-gods, the mixed 
atmosphere of Dryden and ' the Classicks,' the 
unfamiliar look of the lightest trifles in the 
largest type, the jumble of ode and epigram, of 
Martial and Spenser, of La Fontaine and the 
* weary King Ecclesiast/ — all tend to heighten 
the wonderment with which one contemplates 
those portentous ' Poems on Several Occasions.' 
And then, if by chance the book should contain 
— as it sometimes does — the famous print by 
George Vertue, after Belle, one realizes the 
fact that the author was an Envoy and Ambassa- 
dor who was once privileged to ' bandy civil- 
ities ' with the Roi-Soleil, and who, not the less, 
upon the strength of this very performance, in 
that golden Georgian age, managed to extract 
some four thousand guineas from the pockets of 
the most distinguished of his Georgian contem- 
poraries. In the twenty double-column pages 
which follow the poet's dedicatory panegyric of 



2 24 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

the Right Honourable Charles, Earl of Dorset 
and Middlesex, — surely a paragon of noblemen 
and patrons I — you may read their titles. 
There they are, all of them,^ — 

* Art, science, wit ! 
Soldiers like Cassar, 
Statesmen like Pitt 1 ' 

poets like Swift (who took five copies) and 
Pope and Congreve, painters like Jervas and 
Kneller, bishops like Atterbury, maids-of- 
honour like the ' Honourable Mrs. Mary Bellen- 
den' — in fine, all the notabilities from Newton to 
Nash, and each, as must be assumed from the pe- 
cuniary result above recorded, promptly paying 
down his or her subscription for the monster mis- 
cellany put forth by ' left-legged ' Jacob Tonson, 
* at Shakespear's Head over against Katherine- 
Street in the Strand.' In the prefatory sonnet 
to his ' Nuits d'Hiver,' poor Henry Murger 
invoked an anticipatory blessing upon Vhomme 
rare,' — the prospective purchaser who, ^ sans 
marchander d'un sou,' should pay a crown for 
his collection of verses. But what triple — 
what quadruple — what infinitely-extended ben- 
ediction ought properly to encompass and ac- 
company the buyer of a Brobdingnagian folio of 
poems, largely official and didactic, for the 
munificent sum of two pounds and two shillings I 



Matthew Prior* 225 

If to these divisions of * didactic ' and ^ offi- 
cial' be added a third, under the general title of 
* occasional orfamiliar' verses, we have a rough- 
and-ready classification of Prior's legacy to 
posterity. With the first group we need not 
greatly occupy ourselves, and, except as far as 
concerns the writer's biography, may practically 
neglect the second, always provided that we 
give its fitting commendation to the delightful 
burlesque of M. Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux his 
' Ode sur la Prise de Namur.' What is vital in 
Prior to-day is not what he fondly deemed his 
masterpiece, — 

'Indeed poor Solomon in Rhime 
Was much too grave to be Sublime.' 

he confesses, rather ruefully, in his last pub- 
lished poem, ' The Conversation.' It is 
neither upon ' Solomon ' nor the ' Carmen 
Seculare for the Year 1700' that Prior's claim 
to poetic honours is based, but rather upon 
those light-hearted and whimsical * Vers de 
Soci^t6 ' which have charmed alike judges as 
diverse as Cowper and Thackeray. ' Every 
man,' says Cowper, defending his favourite 
against the 'king critic,' Johnson, — 'every 
man conversant with verse-writing knows, and 
knows by painful experience, that the familiar 

IS 



226 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

style is of all styles the most difficult to succeed 
in. To make verse speak the language of 
prose, without being prosaic, to marshal the 
words of it in such an order as they might 
naturally take in falling from the lips of an 
extemporary speaker, yet without meanness, 
harmoniously, elegantly, and without seeming 
to displace a syllable for the sake of the rhyme, 
is one of the most arduous tasks a poet can 
undertake. He that could accomplish this task 
was Prior ; many have imitated his excellence 
in this particular, but the best copies have fallen 
far short of the original.'^ ' Prior's,' says Thack- 
eray again, also putting in his respectable pro- 
test against ' the great Samuel,' ' seem to me 
amongst the easiest, the richest, the most 
charmingly humorous of English lyrical poems. 
Horace is always in his mind, and his song, and 
his philosophy, his good sense, his happy easy 
turns and melody, his loves, and his Epicurean- 
ism, bear a great resemblance to that most 
delightful and accomplished master.'^ If Prior 
is to be judged by his peers, we may take the 
decision of Cowper and Thackeray as one 

1 Cowper to the Rev. William Unwin, 17 January, 
1782. 

2 * English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century,' 
1853^ — 'Prior, Gay, and Pope.' 



Matthew Prior, 227 

against which there is no appeal. Both were 
lovers of Horace; both were humorists ; both, 
when they chose, themselves excelled in that 
* famihar style ' of which the art is only hidden. 
Perhaps, if there be anything in the theory 
which makes kindliness one of the fundamen- 
tal characteristics of the Humorist as opposed 
to the Wit, both Thackeray and Cowper be- 
longed more distinctly to the former class than 
Prior ; but, in any case, both possessed that 
sympathetic insight into Prior's work without 
which there can be no real comprehension. 

Matthew Prior was of humbler extraction 
than either Pope or Gay. He was born, as is 
now generally supposed, at Wimborne or Wim- 
borne Minster, in East Dorset, on the 21st 
July, 1664, his father, George Prior, being de- 
scribed as a joiner. From the presence in the 
St. John's College register of the epithet ' gene- 
rosuSy' it has been surmised that the elder Prior 
may have held some land, but the general laxity 
of the record does not justify much theorizing. 
Of his son's life in his native town there is but 
one anecdote. In the library over the sacristy 
in the old church of St. Cuthberga is a chained 
copy of Raleigh's great ' History of the World' 
of 1 614, in which a hole is said to have been 
burned by Master Matthew, when dozing over 



2 28 Eighteenth Century Fignettes. 

the book by the light of a smuggled taper. 
That between the magnificent opening and the 
eloquent close of those thirteen hundred folio 
pages there are many nodding places, may be 
conceded ; but, unfortunately, there are also 
incredulous spirits who contend that this par- 
ticular defacement is the work, not of a candle, 
but of a red-hot poker.^ From Wimborne the 
elder Prior moved to London, of which place 
his son, in the account drawn up by himself for 
Jacob's ' Lives of the English Poets ' describes 
him as a citizen. He is stated to have taken 
up his abode in Stephen's Alley, Westminster, 
whence he sent young Matthew to the neigh- 
bouring school, then under the rule (or ferule) 
of the redoubtable Dr. Busby. By the time he 
had reached the middle of the third form his 
father died. His mother being unable to pay 
his school fees, he fell into the care of an uncle, 
a vintner, and the proprietor of the old-estab- 
lished Rhenish Wine House in Channel (now 
Cannon) Row, Westminster.^ 

1 Candle or poker, it is hard to surrender this pictu- 
resque tradition entirely. But Mr. G. A. Aitken has prac- 
tically demolished it by the discovery that the books were 
placed in the library at a much later date than Prior's 
boyhood (* Contemporary Review,' May, 1890). 

2 < wTe took him [Roger Pepys] out of the Hall \i. e. 
Westminster Hall] to Prior's, the Rhenish winehouse, 



Matthew Prior. 229 

His uncle, finding him not only intelligent, 
but a fair accountant, took him as his assistant, 
his seat being in the bar, then the favourite 
rendezvous of Lord Dorset and his associates. 
Calling one day to ask for his friend, Mr. 
Fleetwood Shepherd, Dorset found young Prior 
with a Horace in his hand, and questioning 
him thereupon, tested his proficiency by setting 
him to turn an ode into English. The boy did 
it in verse, and so well, that it became part of 
the entertainment of the users of the house to 
get him to translate Ovid and Horace. At 
last, upon one occasion when Dr. Sprat, the 
Dean of Westminster, and Mr. Knipe, the 
second master of the school, were both pres- 
ent, Lord Dorset asked him whether he would 
go back to his studies under Dr. Busby. As 
he and his uncle were equally willing, he began 
again to attend school, the Earl paying for his 
books, and his uncle for his clothes, until such 
time as he became a King's scholar. One of 
his schoolfellows was another Dorset lad, the 
Thomas Dibben who afterwards translated the 
* Carmen Seculare ' into Latin. But his chief 
boyish friends were two brothers who lived in 

and there had a pint or two of wine and a dish of an- 
chovies ' (Pepys' * Diary ' by Mynors Bright, 3 Feb., 
1660). 



230 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

Manchester House, a great mansion opposite 
his uncle's tavern. These were Charles and 
James Montagu, the sons of the Honourable 
George Montagu. Charles (afterwards Earl 
of Halifax) was rather older than Prior, and, 
at Westminster, his intimacy was stronger with 
James, who became Lord Chief Baron of the 
Exchequer.^ In 1682, Charles Montagu, a 
King's scholar like himself, was admitted a 
fellow-commoner of Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge, and, a year later. Prior, finding that 
the younger brother would probably follow his 
example, and fearing also that he himself would 
be sent to Christ Church, Oxford, accepted, 
much against Lord Dorset's will, one of three 
scholarships, then recently established by the 
Duchess of Somerset at St. John's College, 
Cambridge. This step, although for the time 
it alienated him from his patron, was not, in 
the event, unsatisfactory, because, being the 
only Westminster boy at St. John's, he attracted 
much more notice than he would have received 
elsewhere. 

1 Sir James Montagu left some valuable MS. memo- 
randa respecting Prior, from a transcript of which several 
of the statements in this paper have been derived. The 
original document, which once belonged to the Duchess 
of Portland, is said to be preserved among the Harley 
papers at Longleat. 



Matthew Prior. 251 

He was admitted to his bachelor's degree in 
1686, and to the year following belongs one of 
his earliest excursions into letters. In 1687 
Dryden published 'The Hind and the Panther/ 
and among the numerous replies which it called 
forth was a thin quarto, entitled ' The Hind and 
the Panther transvers'd to the Story of the 
Country-Mouse and the City-Mouse.' It is 
not one of those performances which, in these 
days, offer great attractions to the reader, al- 
though, when it appeared, in addition to being 
exceedingly popular with the No-Popery party, 
it was, in all probability, full-packed with topi- 
cal allusion. Ostensibly, Prior shared the 
honours of authorship with Charles Montagu, 
but it is most likely, as is inferred in more than 
one anecdote, that the work was mainly his,^ 
and there are certainly some touches in it which 
might be supposed to have been especially dic- 
tated by his recollections of the Rhenish Wine 
House : — 

1 Cf. Lord Peterborough, as reported by Spence (* An- 
ecdotes ' by Singer, 2d ed., 1858, p. 102). Sir James Mon- 
tagu, in his memoranda, as might be expected, divides the 
praise more equally. But he adds that the poem, * con- 
tributed not less to the credit of Mr. Prior, who be- 
came thereby reconciled to his first patron the Earl of 
Dorset.' 



232 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

* Drawers must be trusted, through whose hands convey'd, 
You take the Liquor, or you spoil the Trade. 
For sure those Honest Fellows have no knack 
Of putting off stuni'd Claret for Pontack. 
How long, alas I would the poor Vintner last. 
If all that drink xaxx.'sX judge, and every Guest 
Be allowed to have an understanding Tast ? ' 

According to Dean Lockier, Dryden was 
greatly pained by this parody.^ ' I have heard 
him say; "for two young fellows, that I have 
always been very civil to ; to use an old man in 
misfortunes, in so cruel a manner!" — And he 
wept as he said it.' This last detail is one of 
those which are the despair of the biographer. 
That the evidence is fairly good it is impossible 
to deny ; but the story is wholly opposed to all 
we know of Dryden, and no one can be blamed 
who follows Johnson and Scott in declining to 
believe it. 

In April, 1688, Prior obtained a fellowship, 
and in this year he figures as the composer of 
the annual poetical tribute which St. John's 
College paid to one of its benefactors, the Earl 
of Exeter. This he had undertaken at the in- 
stigation of Dr. Gower, the head of the Col- 
lege, who had always taken an especial interest 
in him. Those conversant with Prior's maturer 

1 Spence, ut supra^ p. 47. 



Matthew Prior. 233 

muse will perhaps be surprised to hear that it 
was a rhymed exercise upon a verse of Exodus, 
in which some of the writer's critics discern the 
promise of his future * Solomon.' It is more 
material to note that, as the following extract 
proves, he was already an academic disciple of 
Horace, or of such English Horatiansas Dryden 
and Cowley : 

* Why does the constant Sun 
With measur'd Steps his radiant Journeys run ? 
Why does He order the Diurnal Hours 
To leave Earth's other Part, and rise in Ours ? 
Why does He wake the correspondent Moon, 
And fill her willing Lamp with liquid Light, 
Commanding Her with delegated Pow'rs 
To beautifie the World, and bless the Night ? 

Why does each animated Star 
Love the just Limits of it's proper Sphere ? 

Why does each consenting Sign 

With prudent Harmony combine 
In Turns to move, and subsequent appear. 
To gird the Globe, and regulate the Year ? ' 

This, it may be imagined, with its careful and 
perspicuous art, must have been far above the 
usual average of the votive verses which went 
annually to ' Burleigh-house by Stamford-town.' 
One of its results was that Prior went to Bur- 
leigh himself. That distinguished connoisseur, 
John, Earl of Exeter, required a tutor for his 



234 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

sons, and Dr. Gower hastened to recommend 
the author of the metrical excursus upon Exodus. 
From a rambling rhyming epistle to Dorset's 
friend, Fleetwood Shepherd, who seems to 
have been Prior's mediator with his now recon- 
ciled first patron, he must have been staying at 
Burleigh in May, 1689, when it was dated. ^ 
But his tutorship was of brief duration. Lord 
Exeter was opposed to the Revolution and its 
consequences, and began to meditate migration 
to Italy in search of new art-treasures. Prior 
accordingly applied to Lord Dorset, who at 
William's accession had become Lord Cham- 
berlain, for his patronage. Waiting longer than 
he anticipated, he sent to Shepherd, later Usher 
of the Black Rod, a second epistle by way of 
reminder. At the close of this comes a refer- 
ence which is generally supposed to account 
for the absence of the verses from the author- 

l ' Sometimes I climb my Mare, and kick her 
To bottl'd Ale, the neighbouring Vicar ; 
Sometimes at Stamford take a Quart, 
'Squire Shephard's Health, — With all my Heart.' 

At Burleigh Prior wrote the verses on Jordaens' picture 
of * Seneca dying in a Bath,' which belonged to Lord 
Exeter, and also those * To the Countess of Exeter, play- 
ing on the Lute,' both of which are printed in his volumes 
of 1709 and 17 18. 



Matthew Prior ^ 235 

ized collections published in Prior's lifetime. 
Either in consequence of his share in the 
* Country- Mouse and the City- Mouse,' or (as 
is more likely) because he was older, possessed 
superior interest, and had married a Dowager 
Countess, Charles Montagu had already en- 
tered upon what was to prove a distinguished 
path in life : — 

* There 's One thing more I had almost slipt, 
But that may do as well in Postscript; 
My Friend Charles Montague 's preferred ; 
Nor wou'd I have it long observ'd, 
That One Mouse Eats, while T Other 's Starv'd.' 

More fortunate than Gay, whose life was frit- 
tered away in vain hopes of Court favour, Prior 
was not kept waiting much longer for a reply to 
his petition. Shortly after the above epistle, 
and it is only reasonable to suppose, in conse- 
quence of it, he was appointed, through Lord 
Dorset, secretary to Lord Dursley, afterwards 
Earl of Berkeley, then going as King William's 
Ambassador to the Hague. 

With this, which, even in that paradise of 
patronage, must have been an exceptional eleva- 
tion for an untried man of six-and-twenty, un- 
blessed with advantages of birth, and having 
no distinction but a college fellowship, begins 
Prior's official career — a career which lasted 



236 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

the greater part of his lifetime. In Holland he 
must have remained several years. During the 
interim, he was made gentleman of the bed- 
chamber to the king, with whom, owing to 
Lord Dursley's gout, he had frequent relations 
during the great Congress of 1691,^ and, be- 
sides contributing to Dryden's * Miscellanies,' 
he seems to have exhibited a commendable as- 
siduity in the * strict meditation ' of that diplo- 
matic muse, which (whatever else it might be) 
was certainly not thankless. In 1693 he pre- 
pared for the music of Purcell, a New Year's 
' Hymn to the Sun ; ' and in 169^, he was con- 
spicuous among the group of mourning bards 
who, in black-framed /o/io, shed their melodious 
tears for ' Dread Maria's Universal Fall ' — 
otherwise Queen Mary's death. Later in the 
same year, in September, he sent to Tonson, 
from the Hague, one of his most admirable 
efforts in this way — his answer to Boileau's 
' Ode sur la Prise de Namur' in 1692, in which, 
taking advantage of the town's recapture by the 
English three years later, he turns verse after 
verse of the French critic's pompous and para- 

1 King William seems to have taken very kindly to 
Prior. When Lord Dursley went away on sick leave, his 
Majesty said he must leave Mr. Prior behind as Secretaire 
du Roy. 



Matthew Prior. 237 

sitic song against himself. * A secretary at 30,' 
he tells Tonson, ' is hardly allowed the privilege 
of burlesque,' and the ' English Ballad on the 
Taking of Namur,' rare in its first form (for it was 
afterwards considerably altered), has no author's 
name. But neither this daring departure from 
metrical court-dress, nor the more fervent strain 
with which Prior greeted King William after 
the failure of the Assassination Plot of 1696, 
retains the characteristic vitality of a brief poem 
belonging to the same year, where the Epicu- 
rean ' Heer Secretdris ' describes his periodical 
progress — 

' In a little Dutch-chaise on a Saturday night, 

On my left hand my Horace, a Nymph on my right * — 

to the extra-mural retreat in which, for the 
nonce, he escaped from Dutch tea-parties, state 
papers, and the ' long-winded cant of a dull 
refugee.' 

In 1697 he was again acting as secretary to 
the negotiators at the Treaty of Ryswick, for 
bringing over the Articles of Peace in connec- 
tion with which, * to their Excellencies the 
Lords Justices,' he received a gratuity of two 
hundred guineas ; and, after being nominated 
Secretary of State in Ireland, he was made sec- 
retary, in the following year, to the splendid 



238 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

embassy to France of the Earl of Portland, an 
office which he continued under the Earl of 
Jersey. At this period it must have been that 
he delivered himself of that audacious utterance 
which is seldom omitted from any account of 
him. Looking, in the galleries of Versailles, 
at the famous battle-pieces of M. Charles Le 
Brun, with their arrogant inscriptions, he was 
asked if King William's palace had any corre- 
sponding decorations. * The monuments of 
my Master's Actions,' he replied, ' are to be 
seen everywhere but in his own House.' If 
this excellent retort was ever repeated to Louis 
the Magnificent, it must be assumed that he 
was connoisseur enough to admire its neatness, 
as Prior seems to have always been an accept- 
able personage at the Court of France. This 
is amply evidenced from existing letters both of 
Louis and Anne. And it may be added that the 
favour of three monarchs, for (as already stated) 
William was also exceedingly well disposed to 
him, should conclusively negative the assertions 
of Pope and the historian Coxe as to Prior's 
diplomatic shortcomings. That he disliked his 
calling is conceivable, but, even if there were 
not ample evidence to the contrary in the French 
archives, there can be no ground for concluding 
that he was inefficient. Swift, in his * History 



Matthew Prior. 239 

of the Four Last Years of the Queen/ specially 
refers to his business aptitude, and Bolingbroke 
testifies to his acquaintance with matters of 
trade. -^ These are witnesses who are entitled 
to a hearing, even against Pope and the ' co- 
pious archdeacon' who compiled the life of 
Marlborough. 

But to trace Prior's political fortunes in detail 
would be far beyond the scope of this paper. 
He continued at Paris some time after the ar- 
rival of the Earl of Manchester, who succeeded 
Lord Jersey, and then, having had ' a very par- 
ticular audience ' with his royal master at Loo 
in Holland, was made an under-secretary of 
state. This was in 1699, in the winter of which 
year he produced another lengthy official ode, 
the 'Carmen Seculare for the Year 1700,' an 
elaborate laudation of the exploits and achieve- 
ments of his hero, * the Nassovian.' Honours 
accumulated upon him rapidly at this date. 
The University of Cambridge dignified him with 
the degree of M.A., and he succeeded John 
Locke, invalided, as a Commissioner of Trade 

1 Letter to Queen Anne at Windsor, 20th September, 
17 1 1. Prior's importance in the Utrecht negotiations, it 
may be added, is amply attested by the frequent recurrence 
of his name in the chapters which treat of that subject 
in Legrelle's * La Diplomatic Franjaise et la Succession 
d'Espagne,' vol. iv. (1892). 



240 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

and Plantations. In 1701 he entered Parlia- 
ment as member for East Grinstead. Under 
Anne he joined the Tories, a step which, while 
it brought him into close relations with Harley, 
Bolingbroke, and Swift, had also the effect of 
ranging him on the opposite side in politics to 
Addison, Garth, Steele, and some other of his 
literary contemporaries, besides depriving him 
of his Commissionership. In 171 1 he was em- 
ployed in the secret negotiations for the Peace 
of Utrecht ; and in the following year went to 
Paris with Bolingbroke, eventually, in 171 3, 
taking the place of the Duke of Shrewsbury as 
' sole Minister.' Then came the queen's death 
and the triumph of the Whigs. When, after a 
brief period of doubtful apprehensions. Prior 
returned to England in March, 171 5, he was 
impeached and imprisoned for two years. Dur- 
ing his confinement he wrote one of the longest 
of his poems, -' Alma ; or. The Progress of the 
Mind.' In 1717 he was excepted from the Act 
of Grace, although he was, notwithstanding, 
shortly afterwards discharged. His varied em- 
ployments had left him no richer than they 
found him. The Whigs had taken from him a 
Commissionership of Customs which had been 
given him by the Tories, and his means were 
limited to his St. John's fellowship. This, with 



Matthew Prior* 241 

unusual foresight, he had retained through all 
his vicissitudes. To increase his income, his 
friends, Arbuthnot, Gay, and others, but espe- 
cially Lord Harley and Lord Bathurst,^ devised 
the plan of printing his poems in the sumptuous 
folio already described. From one of his let- 
ters, it seems to have been delivered to the sub- 
scribers early in 17 19, and, as we have said, it 
brought him 4,000 guineas. To this. Lord 
Harley added an equal sum for the purchase 
of Down Hall, in Essex (not far from the Hat- 
field Broad Oak of Mr. Locker Lampson's 
* London Lyrics '), which was to revert to him- 
self at Prior's death. There is a pretty ballad 
among Prior's posthumous works, but appar- 
ently wrongly dated 171$, which relates, 'to 
the tune of King John and the Abbot of Canter- 
bury,' how he paid his first visit to his new 
abode, in company with Harley's land-jobbing 
agent, John Morley of Halstead, and it proves 
that cares of state had in no wise abated his 
metrical buoyancy or his keen sense of humour. 
In their progress they arrive at the still-existent 
Bull at Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire, where, be- 
tween insinuating Mr. Morley and the hostess, 
ensues the following colloquy of memories : — 

1 Cf. Preface to * Solomon ' in * Poems ' of 17 18. 
16 



242 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

* Come here, my sweet Landlady, pray how d' ye do ? 
Where is Cicily so cleanly, and Prudence, and Sue ? 
And where is the widow that dwelt here below ? 
And the Hostler that sung about eight years ago ? 

* And where is your Sister, so mild and so dear ? 
Whose voice to her Maids like a Trumpet was clear. 
By my troth ! she replies, you grow Younger I think : 
And pray, Sir, what Wine does the Gentleman drink ? 

* Why now let me die, Sir, or live upon Trust, 
If I know to which question to answer you first : 

Why, Things, since I saw you, most strangely have vary'd, 
The Hostler is Hang'd, and the Widow is marry'd. 

* And Frue left a child for the Parish to nurse ; 
And Cicily went off with a Gentleman's purse : 
And as to my Sister, so mild and so dear, 

She has lain in the Church-yard full many a year. 

* Well, Peace to her Ashes ! what signifies Grief ? 
She roasted red Veal and she powder'd lean Beef: ^ 
Full nicely she knew to cook up a fine Dish, 

For tough was her Pullets, and tender her Fish.^ 

In the old engraving by the once-popular 
Gerard Vandergucht, prefixed' to the earlier 
editions of the poem, of which the foregoing 
by no means exhausts the lively humour, you 
shall see ' Matthew ' and ' Squire Morley ' lum- 
bering along in their carved Georgian chariot, 

1 Powder'd Beef = salted beef. 



Matthew Prior, 243 

while Prior's Swedish servant John Oeman, or 
Newman, mounted on his master's horse, 
Ralpho, paces slowly at the side. Having pur- 
chased Down-Hall, Prior continued to reside 
in Essex, for the most part, during the re- 
mainder of his life, diverting himself — much 
after Pope's fashion — with elaborate projects 
(on paper)^ for improving the property, and, in 
practice, building a summer-house or two, cut- 
ting new walks in the wood, or composing ' a 
fish-pond that will hold ten carps.' Meanwhile, 
his health gradually declined, and, like Swift, 
he was troubled with deafness, a complaint 
which he whimsically said he had neglected 
while his head was in danger. He died, finally, 
of a lingering fever, at Lord Harley's seat of 
Wimpole, in Cambridge, where he was a fre- 
quent visitor, on the i8th September, 172 1, 
being then in his fifty-eighth year, — a circum- 
stance which did not prevent an admirer (Mr. 
Robert Ingram) from writing that : — 

* Horace and He were call'd in haste. 
From this vile Earth to Heaven ; 
The cruel year not fully pass'd, 
^tatis, Fifty-seven/ 

^ In James Gibbs's * Book of Architecture,* 1728, is ' A 
Draught made for Matthew Prior, Esq. ; to have been 
built at Down Hall\x\. Essex* Gibbs also designed Prior's 
monument in Westminster Abbey. 



244 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

A monument, for which * last piece of Humane 
Vanity ' he left five hundred pounds, was after- 
wards erected to him in Westminster Abbey. 
On it was placed a bust by Antoine Coysevox 
(oddly masquerading in his will as Coriveaux), 
which had been presented to him by Louis 
XIV., and, at his own desire, the inscription 
was intrusted to that incontinent epitaph-maker 
Dr. Robert Freind, of whose lengthy achieve- 
ments in this line Pope said sarcastically, that 
one half would never be read and the other half 
would never be believed. In this instance, 
Freind's record must have been more authori- 
tative than usual, since it seems to have supplied 
no small portion of their material to Prior's first 
biographers. Among other legacies, chiefly to 
friends — for only one relative is mentioned in 
the will — he left two hundred pounds' worth of 
books ' to the College of St. John the Evange- 
list, in Cambridge.' These, which were to be 
kept in the library with some earlier gifts, in- 
cluded the 'Poems' of 1718, 'in the greatest 
Paper.' He also bequeathed to the college 
Lord Jersey's portrait by Hyacinthe Rigaud, 
together with the already mentioned picture of 
himself by Alexis-Simon Belle, in his ambassa- 
dor's robes. 

Although, at last, it fell to another hand to 



Matthew Prion 245 

write Prior's epitaph^ he had more than once, 
after the semi-morbid, semi-cynical fashion of 
his time, amused himself by attempting it. One 
of his essays, — 

* To Me 't was giv'n to die : to Thee 't is giv'n 
To live : Alas 1 one Moment sets us ev'n. 
Mark 1 how impartial is the Will of Heaven ! ' 

is certainly superior to the lapidary efforts of 
either Pope or Gay on their own behalf. An- 
other was doubtless the outcome of some 
moment when he felt more keenly than usual 
the disparity between his position and his ante- 
cedents, as, for example, when that haughtiest 
of men, Lord Strafford, declined to act in the 
Utrecht Treaty with a person of so mean an 
extraction. 

* Nobles and Heralds, by your leave, 
Here lies what once was Matthew Prior ; 
The son of Adam and of Eve, 

Can Bourbon or Nassau claim higher ? * ^ 

1 This is said to have been 'spoken extempore.' It 
was more probably — like Goldsmith's * Ned Purdon ' — 
an adapted recollection, for there is an elder epitaph as 
follows : — 

* Johnnie Carnegie lais heer, 

Descendit of Adam and Eve, 
Gif ony can gang hieher, 
I'se willing gie him leve.' 



246 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

Among his posthumous verses there is also a 
poem headed ' For my own monument/ which, 
as he says he was fifty at the time of writing it, 
may be regarded as his last experiment in this 
line of literature. After referring to the fact that 
his bust by Coysevox is not only provided but 
paid for, and leaving the spectator to judge of 
its merit as a work of art, he bids him distrust 
what may be said in praise of the original, as 
the marble may lie : — 

* Yet counting as far as to Fifty his years, 

His virtues and vices were as other men's are ; 
High hopes he conceiv'd, and he smother 'd great fears, 
In life party-colour'd, half pleasure, half care.' 

The independent spirit of Prior's lines, however, is re- 
flected in other parts of his work. Compare, for instance, 
the many stanzas in * The Old Gentry : ' 

* But coronets we owe to crowns. 
And favour to a court's affection, 
By nature we are Adam's sons, 
And sons of Anstis by election. 

* KiNGSALE, eight hundred years have roll'd, 
Since thy forefathers held the plow, 
When this shall be in story told. 
Add, That my kindred do so now/ 

* Anstis ' was Garter King at Arms. ' Venus shall give 
him Form, and Anstis Birth ' — says Pope. 



Matthew Prior. 247 

The next stanza — claiming that while neither 

* To business a drudge, nor to faction a slave 
He strove to make int'rest and freedom agree/ — 

may safely be assumed to describe Prior's not 
very elevated character. As already implied, 
he had adopted his profession not because he 
v\^as especially fitted for it, but because the 
ways were open ; and if he prosecuted it with 
industry and gravity, it was also, in all likeli- 
hood, without conviction or enthusiasm. He 
was not ' too fond of the right to pursue the 
expedient' (as Goldsmith said of Burke), and 
though, personally, he may have approved the 
Partition Treaties as little as the Treaty of 
Utrecht,^ he was doubtless philosophically satis- 
fied, if he was able to extract an intelligible 
action from indefinite instructions. This saved 
him from the irritation and disappointment to 
which the dilatory and tortuous diplomacy of 
the time would have subjected a keener and 
more earnest spirit. As it was, while declining 
to be a drudge to business^ he seems to have 

1 ' Matthew, who knew the whole Intrigue, 
Ne'er much approved That Mystic League. 
In the vile Utrecht Treaty too 
Poor Man, He found enough to do.* 

The Conversation, 1720. 



248 Eighteenth Century yignettes, 

succeeded in retaining the respect of his em- 
ployers, and, if equally unwilling to act the part 
of faction's slave, he escaped much of the op- 
probrium incurred by others of his contempora- 
ries, when, under Anne, he passed from one side 
to the other. Of his private life^ such records as 
remain (and they are neither very abundant nor 
very authentic) exhibit him as witty and accessi- 
ble, much addicted to punning, and an advanced 
convert to Swift's play-day creed of * Vive la 
bagatelle.'' We get glimpses of him in the 
* Journal to Stella ' — a spare, frail, solemn-faced 
man (' visage de hois ' is Bolingbroke's term) 
who had generally a cough, which he only 
called a cold, and who walked in the park to 
make himself fat, as Swift did for the opposite 
reason of making himself thin. Sometimes they 
dine at ' Harley's' or ' Masham's ; ' sometimes 
sup with Peterborough or General Webb 
(' trompette de Wynendael ! ') ; sometimes sit 
together by the fireside at the Smyrna in Pall 
Mall, ' receiving acquaintance.' Occasionally 
Prior entertains at his own house in West- 
minster, where the guests will be Atterbury and 
Arbuthnot, or a Lord Treasurer and a Secretary 
of State. ' If at the old hour of midnight after 
your drudgery,' he writes to Bolingbroke, * a 
cold blade-bone of mutton in Duke Street will 



Matthew Prior. 249 

go down sicut olim, it, with all that belongs to 
the master of the house ... is entirely yours.' 
At Westminster, too, met, now and then, that 
famous brotherhood of sixteen established by 
Bolingbroke ' to advance conversation and 
friendship, and to reward deserving persons.* 

* Our Weekly Friends To-morrow meet 
At Matthew's Palace, in Duke-street ; 
To try for once, if They can Dine 
On Bacon-Ham and Mutton-Chine * — 

says one of Prior's invitations to Lord Oxford, 
and it goes on to add that ' Dorset us'd to bless 
the Roof.' If eighteenth-century gossip is to 
be trusted — and it was no more trustworthy 
than is modern society-scandal — the host was 
sometimes oppressed, after these elevated fes- 
tivities, by a ' besoin de s'encanailler^' and would 
stroll off to smoke a pipe and drink a bottle of 
ale with two humbler friends in Long Acre, a 
common soldier and his wife. But who knows ? 
The author of ' Down-Hall' was manifestly a 
student of character. Perhaps the soldier was 
a humorist. Perhaps he had carried a halbert 
under * my uncle Toby ' 1 In any case, this of 
itself scarcely justifies Johnson in saying that 
Prior ' in his private relaxation revived the 
tavern,' by which he means the Rhenish Wine 



250 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

House. Unfortunately, there is good ground 
for supposing that Prior's Nannettes and ' nut- 
brown maids ' were by no means such unsub- 
stantial personifications as the Glyceras and 
Lalages of his Roman exemplar ; on the con- 
trary they were highly materialized human beings. 
When there is no Queensberry available, — 

* 'T is from a Handmaid we must take a Helen/ 

says Pope, in his epistle to Martha Blount. 
We have the express authority of Arbuthnot and 
others for believing that Prior's indolent moral- 
ity accepted the alternative without troubling 
itself about the transformation. Certainly, he 
cannot claim to have shown even the fortunate 
discrimination of Xanthias the Phocian. But 
it is needless to enlarge upon the chapter of his 
admitted frailties. It is pleasanter to think of 
him as the friendly, genial, companionable man, 
whom two generations of Dorsets and Oxfords 
delighted to honour, and whom the Duchess 
of Portland, the ' noble, lovely, little Peggy * 
of one of his most charming minor pieces, de- 
scribed as making 'himself beloved by every 
living thing in the house — master, child, and 
servant, human creature, or animal.' ^ 

* Lady Louisa Stuart in Lady M. Wortley Montagu's 
* Works ' by Lord Wharncliffe, 1837, 1. 6^. 



Matthew Prior. 251 

Like Pope, Prior must have ' lisped in num- 
bers.' ' I remember,' he says, in some MSS. 
which once belonged to the above mentioned 
Duchess, and were first printed by Malone, 
' nothing farther in life, than that I made verses,' -^ 
and he adds that he had rhymed on Guy of 
Warwick and killed Colborn, the giant^ before 
he was big enough for Westminster. But ' two 
accidents in youth ' effectively prevented him 
from being * quite possessed with the muse.' 
In the first place, at his Cambridge college, 
prose was more in fashion than verse, and, in 
the second, he went promptly to the Hague, 
where ' he had enough to do in studying his 
French and Dutch, and altering his Terentian 
and original style into that of Articles and Con- 
vention.' All this made poetry less the busi- 
ness than the amusement of his life ; and, as to 
satire, that was too hazardous a diversion for a 
circumspect placeman, who, by a fresh turn of 
the wheel, might find himself suddenly at the 
mercy of a new ministry. Hence, in his capac- 
ity of plenipotentiary and ambassador, Prior 
seems to have studiously deprecated the serious 
profession of poetry. In his witty heroics to 
Boileau after Blenheim, he writes : — 

1 'Prose Works of Dryden,' 1800, i. 545-6. 



252 Eighteenth Century Fignettes. 

' I ne'er was master of the tuneful Trade : 
Or the small Genius which my Youth could boast, 
In Prose and Business lyes extinct and lost; ' 

and in the prose preface to his pseudo-Spen- 
serian Ode to Queen Anne after Ramillies, he 
says that it is long since he has, or at least 
ought to have, quitted Parnassus. Three years 
later, in the preface to his first collection of 
1709, he again characterizes his essays in verse 
as ' Publick Panegyrics, Amorous Odes, Seri- 
ous Reflections, or Idle Tales, the Product of 
his leisure Hours, who had commonly Business 
enough upon his Hands, and was only a Poet 
by Accident.' Whatever affectation there may 
have been in all this, the facts show that, dating 
from his first successful excursus upon Exodus, 
more than twenty years elapsed before he ven- 
tured to collect, from Dryden's ^ Miscellanies ' 
and elsewhere, the scattered material of his 
earlier volume. It is notable, also, that the 
largest levy is from the fifth ' Miscellany' of 
1704, when he was probably least occupied as 
a diplomatist, and it seems, besides, that his in- 
gathering would have been smaller, and more 
eclectic, had not many of his pieces been re- 
printed very incorrectly in 1707, without his 
knowledge.^ Publication was, therefore, forced 

1 A second unauthorized collection appeared in 171 6, 
which he expressly repudiated by notice in the * London 



Matthew Prior, 253 

upon him, and he was obliged, as he says, to 
put forth * an indifferent Collection of Poems, 
for fear of being thought the Author of a worse.' 
In the closing words of his dedication to Lord 
Dorset, he refers to some attempts ' of a very 
different Nature (the Product of my severer 
Studies),' which he destines for a future book. 
One of these must obviously have been the 
long-incubated ' Solomon,' which, with the sub- 
sequently written ' Alma,' and a number of epi- 
grams and minor pieces make up the chief 
additions to the /o/io of 1718. * Down-Hall' 
and ' The Conversation,' which belong to a 
later date, are, of necessity, absent from the 
tall volume, but, in default of satisfactory ex- 
planation, it is certainly a curious instance of 
paternal blindness, or untoward accident, that 
three of the poems by which the author is best 
known to posterity, ' The Secretary,' ' The 
Female Phaeton,' and the incomparable ' Child 
of Quality,' are not to be found in its pages. ^ 

Gazette * for March 24 in that year. The subject is too 
large for discussion here ; but both probably contained 
certain pieces which Prior — in Pope's words — * thought 
it prudent to disown.' 

1 'The Female Phaeton' was only published in 1718, 
and perhaps was written too late to be included in the 
volume, which, by a letter from Prior to Swift, was ' quite 



254 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

Nor do those pages include the dialogue of 
' Daphne and Apollo,' which Pope told Spence 
pleased him as much as anything he had ever 
read of Prior's. These omissions are the more 
significant because Prior is known to have 
' kept everything by him, even to all his school 
exercises/^ 

With Prior's longest and most ambitious poem, 
the common consent of modern criticism had 
made it needless to linger. That he himself 
should have preferred ' Solomon on the Vanity 
of the World ' to his other works, need surprise 
no one who is acquainted with literary history. 
* What do you tell me of my '^ Alma"?' said 
its author petulantly to Pope (whose opinion he 
had asked on * Solomon '), ' — a loose and 
hasty scribble, to relieve the tedious hours of 
my imprisonment, while in the messenger's 
hand.'* But the couplet already quoted from 
'The Conversation' proves that, by 1720, he 
had recognized that others were in accord with 
Pope. There is a letter in Pope's ' Correspon- 
dence ' which shows that Prior sent him ' The 

printed off* on 25 September, 1718. But the * Child of 
Quality ' appeared in vol. v. of Dryden's ' Miscellanies,* 
as far back as 1704. 

1 Spence's * Anecdotes * by Singer, 2nd ed., 1858, p. 36. 

2 RufEhead's 'Life of Pope,* 1769, p. 482 n. 



Matthew Prior. 255 

Conversation,' perhaps — may we not suppose ? 
— with the vague hope that Pope might soften 
or reverse his verdict.^ But Pope's reply abides 
in generalities, and gives no sign that he had 
altered his judgment — a judgment which the 
majority of subsequent critics have unhesitat- 
ingly confirmed. If readers like John Wesley 
and Cowper thought highly of ' Solomon,' it 
must be concluded that what they admired was 
rather the wise king's wisdom than Prior's ren- 
dering of it. Johnson himself admits that it is 
wearisome, and Johnson, whose ' lax talking ' 
and perverse criticism have done Prior so much 
wrong, may perhaps, upon this point of weari- 
someness, be admitted to speak with some 
authority. Ttie presence of one quotable 
couplet — 

* Abra was ready e'er I call'd her name ; 
And tho' I call'd another, Abra came ' — 

can no more secure its immortality than — 
' Fine by Degrees, and beautifully less* 

(which Pope copied into his 

* Fine by defect, and delicately weak ' ) 

can revitalize the hopeless dried-specimen into 
which Prior flattened out the fine old ballad of 

1 Vol. V. {1886), Pope to Prior, February, 1720. 



256 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

* The Nut-Brown Maid/ In the more leisurely 
age of country book-clubs, it is conceivable that 
even * Solomon' and ' Henry and Emma ' may 
have gone soothingly to the gentle bubbling of 
Mrs. Unwin's tea-urn, or even to the rumble of 
John Wesley's coach wheels on a dusty post- 
ing road between London and Bristol ; but 
to-day, when the hurrying reader must ask 
rigorously of everything. Is this personal to the 
author ? — Is it what he, and he alone, can give 
me ? — such efforts as Prior's masterpiece (in 
his own opinion), and his useless paraphrase of 
simpler and sincerer work, fall irretrievably into 
the limbo of mistaken tours de forced 

^ Cowper justly praises the execution of * Solomon,* 
and, as no recent writer seems to have dared to give a 
serious quotation from the poem, the following may 
serve as a specimen : — 

' To the late Revel, and protracted feast 
Wild Dreams succeeded, and disorder'd Rest ; 
And as at Dawn of Morn fair Reason's Light 
Broke thro' the Fumes and Phantoms of the Night ; 
"What had been said, I ask'd my soul, what done ; 
How flow'd our Mirth, and whence the Source begun ? 
Perhaps the Jest that charm'd the sprightly Croud, 
And made the Jovial Table laugh so loud, 
To some false Notion ow'd its poor Pretence, 
To an ambiguous Word's perverted Sense, 
To a wild Sonnet, or a wanton Air, 
Offense and Torture to the sober Ear. 



Matthew Prior* 257 

With the * loose and hasty scribble ^of * Alma' 
the case is different. Here, to use his own 
words, ' the Man We talk with is Mat. Prior,' 
he talks in his own inimitable way. The piece 
or fragment — a discursive dialogue upon the 
locality of the soul, carried on between the 
author and Dick Shelton, the * dear Friend, 
and old Companion' of his Will, — has no per- 
ceptible plan ; and its ultimate morality is very 
much the ' Begone, dull Care/ and ' Pass the 
Rosy Wine ' of that more modern philosopher, 
Mr. Richard Swiveller. But it is not to be 
read for its argument, or for that meaning which 
Goldsmith failed to grasp, but for its delightfully- 
wayward digressions, its humour and its good- 
humour, its profusion of epigram and happy 
illustration. Butler — though Cowper doubted 
it — is plainly Prior's model, the difference 
being in the men and not in the measure. 
Indeed, the fact is evident from the express 

Perhaps, alas ! the pleasing Stream was bought 
From this Man's Error, from another's fault ; 
From Topics which Good-nature would forget. 
And Prudence mention with the last Regret/ 

(Pleas ure : The Second Book. ) 

From all of which it may be concluded that after-dinner 
talk, 'in halls of Lebanonian cedar/ differed but little 
from after-dinner talk, temp. Anne and Victoria. 

17 



258 Eighteenth Century Fignettes. 

reference to Butler in the opening lines of Canto 
ii. : — 

* But shall we take the Muse abroad. 
To drop her idly on the Road ? 
And leave our Subject in the middle ; 
As Butler did his Bear and Fiddle ? 
Yet He, consummate Master knew, 
When to recede, and where pursue : 
His noble Negligences teach, 
What Others' Toils despair to reach. 
He, perfect Dancer, climbs the Rope, 
And balances your Fear and Hope : 
If, after some distinguish'd Leap, 
He drops his Pole, and seems to slip ; 
Straight gath'ring all his active Strength, 
He rises higher half his Length. 
With Wonder You approve his Slight ; 
And owe your Pleasure to your Fright. 
But, like poor Andrew, I advance, 
False Mimic of my Master's Dance : 
Around the Cord a while I sprawl ; 
And thence, tho' low, in earnest fall.' 

Prior here, naturally, and not unbecomingly, 
since his object is to eulogize the author of 
* Hudibras,' underrates his own powers. He 
may, as Johnson says, ' want the bullion of his 
master,' but, in the foregoing passage, he is 
praising his art, and in the art of Hudibrastic 
or octosyllabic verse he himself is second to 
none. As it happens, the excellence of his 



Matthew Prior. 259 

achievement in this way is almost scientifically 
demonstrable. Among Pope's works is usually 
included an imitation of Horace's ' Hoc erat in 
votis ' (Satire vi. bk. ii.), the first half of which 
is Swift's, the rest being by Pope. Criticism 
has not failed to make the comparison which 
such a combination inevitably suggests. Swift 
was copying Butler ; Pope was copying Swift. 
But each gives the measure something of his 
individua! quality : Swift makes it easier, more 
direct, more idiomatic ; Pope, more pointed, 
more sparkling, more elegant. If anyone will 
take the trouble to study the Swift-cam-Pope 
collaboration, and then read a page of Prior at 
his best, he will, in all probability, speedily ar- 
rive at the conclusion that, in craftsmanship, at 
all events. Prior combines the more distinctive 
characteristics of both. He is as easy as Swift 
and as polished as Pope. 

With this mastery over a vehicle so especially 
fitted for humorous narrative, it is scarcely sur- 
prising that he turned his attention to the ' Tale,' 
which, in the England under Anne, passed for 
the equivalent of the technically-admirable 
' Conte ' of La Fontaine. His skill in simile 
and illustration, his faculty for profusely em- 
broidering a borrowed theme, his freedom and 
perspicuity, and notwithstanding his own dis- 



26o Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

claimer, his unfailing instinct * when to recede, 
and where pursue,' — all qualified him excel- 
lently for the task. Whether he succeeded in 
actually rivalling his model, is debatable (Pope 
thought that Vanbrugh in his * Fables ' went 
farther),^ but there is no doubt that Prior's 
essays in this direction were among his most 
popular performances. ' Prior tells a story in 
verse the most agreeable that ever I knew,' 
writes Lord Raby to Stepney, in 1705, and he 
spoke no more than the general sentiment of 
his contemporaries.^ Unhappily, the coarse 
themes of the three principal tales Prior wrote 
make it impossible to recommend what, in their 
way, are masterpieces of witty and familiar nar- 
rative. Even in the days when Hannah More 
read ' Tom Jones,' and Miss Burney carried 
Evelina to Congreve's ' Love for Love,' it was 
not without expostulation that Goldsmith was 
permitted to insert ' The Ladle ' and ' Hans 
Carvel ' in the * Beauties of English Poesy,' 
and though Johnson in a moment of paradoxical 

1 Ruff head's ' Life of Pope,' 1769, p. 494 n. 

2 Fenton, for example, imitating Chaucer : — 

' Ryghte wele areeds Dan Prior's song, 
A tale should never be too long ; 
And sikerly in fayre Englond 
None bett doth taling understond.* 



Matthew Prior. 261 

opposition to the censure of Lord Hailes, con- 
tended that there was nothing objectionable in 
* Paulo Purganti,' it would be a bold editor 
who, nowadays, should include it in a popular 
collection. The loss, nevertheless, is a serious 
one, for which the attempts of Gay, of Somer- 
■ville, of Goldsmith even, cannot wholly com- 
pensate us, and certainly not those of the once- 
celebrated Mr. Charles Denis of the ' St. 
James's Magazine,' concerning whose abso- 
lutely forgotten versions of the French fabulist 
admiring contemporaries affirmed that they were 

* not mere translation, 
But La Fontaine by transmigration.' 

There are, it is true, one or two other poems 
of Prior's which are designated ' Tales.' But 
one of the best of these, ' The Conversation,' is 
rather an incident than a story, and the claim of 
most of the rest to their rank is not strong. On 
the other hand, we may take advantage of the 
tale-like title of another piece, ' An English 
Padlock,' to cite its closing lines — lines which 
prove with what unalloyed good sense Prior 
could counsel an English Arnolphe in tribula- 
tion over an English Agn^s : — 

* Dear angry Friend, what must be done ? 
Is there no Way ? — There is but One. 



2 62 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

Send'Her abroad ; and let Her see, 

That all this mingled Mass, which She, 

Being forbidden longs to know. 

Is a dull Farce, an empty Show, 

Powder, and Pocket-Glass, and Beau ; 

A Staple of Romance and Lies, 

False Tears, and real Perjuries ; 

"Where Sighs and Looks are bought and sold, 

And Love is made but to be told : . . . 

And Youth seduc'd from Friends and Fame, 

Must give up Age to Want and Shame. 

Let her behold the Frantick Scene, 

The Women wretched, false the Men ; 

And when, these certain Ills to shun. 

She would to Thy Embraces run ; 

Receive Her with extended Arms : 

Seem more delighted with her Charms : 

Wait on Her to the Park and Play ; 

Put on good Humour ; make Her gay : 

Be to her Virtues very kind : 

Be to her Faults a little blind : 

Let all her Ways be unconfin'd : 

And clap your Padlock — on her Mind.' 

It is not, however, by ' Alma,' or his tales and 
episodes, but by his lighter pieces, that Prior 
escapes the Libitina of letters. His clear and 
compact expression make him one of the best 
of English epigrammatists. Could anything, for 
example, be neater than this ? — 

* Yes, every Poet is a fool : 

By Demonstration Ned can show it : 



Matthew Prior * 263 

Happy, cou'd Ned's inverted Rule 
Prove every Fool to be a Poet/ 

The same may be said of the cognate imitation 
of Martial, ' To John I ow'd great Obligation,' 
and the quatrains entitled ' The Remedy worse 
than the Disease.'^ Here again is a less known 
essay in another fashion, which, for mere faciurCy 
could scarcely be bettered : — 

* When Bibo thought fit from the world to retreat, 
As full of Champagne as an eggs 's full of meat, 
He wak'd in the boat, and to Charon he said, 
He wou'd be rovir'd back, for he was not yet dead. 
Trim the boat, and sit quiet, stern Charon reply'd ; 
You may have forgot, you were drunk when you dy'd.' 

It is a pity that so many of his productions of 
this kind turn wholly upon the decay of beauty 
and the tragedies of the toilet. But among 
them, there is one little version from Plato, 
which Landor might have been proud to sign : — 

* Venus, take my Votive Glass : 
Since I am not what I was ; 
What from this Day I shall be, 
Venus, let Me never see.' 2 

^ Quoted at p. 338 of this volume. 

2 According to Dr. Garnett (* Idylls and Epigrams,* 
1869), Voltaire, borrowing something from Julian the 
Egyptian, has extended this idea : — 



264 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

This variation upon an antique model naturally 
leads one to speak of Prior's classical, or rather 
mythological verses. In these he is most genuine 
where he is most modern, or, in other words, 
revives rather the manner than the matter of 
Greece and Rome. ' His Cloe Hunting,' ' Cloe 
Weeping,' 'Love Disarmed' belong to those 
mere wax-flowers of rhyme at which Swift 
sneered in ' Apollo's Edict.' But where, de- 
pending mainly or wholly upon his personal 
impressions, he only allows his classical memo- 
ries to clarify his style, his efforts are altogether 
charming. What, for instance, could be lighter, 
jauntier, more natural, than these two stanzas 
of ' A Case Stated,' one of his posthumously 
printed pieces : — 

* While I pleaded with passion how much I deserv'd. 

For the pains and the torments for more than a year ; 
She look'd in an Almanack, whence she observed, 
That it wanted a fortnight to Bartlemew-Fair. 

* My Cowley, and Waller, how vainly I quote, 

While my negligent judge only Hears with her Eye, 
In a long flaxen-wig, and embroider'd new coat, 
Her spark saying nothing talks better than 1/ 

* ye le donne h Venus, puisqu^elle est toujours belle ; 
II redouble trop mes ennuis. 
ye ne saurais me voir, dans ce miroir fiddle, 
Ni telle quefetais, ni telle que je suis? 
^ Ptiisqu^elle est toujours belle "* — happily enhances the 
pathos of the offering. 



Matthew Prior, 265 

Purists might object that * deserv'd ' and * ob- 
serv'd ' are not rhymes. But in this, as in the 
couplet in ' Alma ' — 

'And what shall of thy Woods remain. 
Except the Box that threw the Main ? ' — 

Prior would probably have quoted the prece- 
dent of the French. The same qualities of 
elegance and facility which distinguish the 
above verses, are to be found in several other 
well-known pieces. Such are the lines begin- 
ning ' Dear Cloe, how blubber'd is that pretty 
Face ' (from which Tom Moore learnt so much), 

* A Lover's Anger,' * A Simile,' ' The Secre- 
tary,' and half-a-dozen others, — not forgetting 

* The Female Phaeton,' that charming compli- 
ment to the radiant girlish beauty of Catherine 
Hyde, already referred to in an earlier series 
of these papers.^ 

Among the remaining efforts of Prior's muse 
may be mentioned ' The Garland,' ' The Ques- 
tion, to Lisetta,' * Her Right Name,' the verses 
to Charles Montagu, those beginning ' Spare, 
Gen'rous Victor, spare the Slave,' and 'The 
Merchant, to secure his Treasure — ' to which 
last Mr. Palgrave has given the currency of the 

1 ' Prior's " Kitty " in 'Eighteenth Century Vignettes/ 
1892, pp. 19-30. 



266 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

* Golden Treasury.' Nor should be omitted the 
Horatian verses in Robbe's ' Geography/ or 
those in Mezeray's ' History,' sacred for ever 
by their connection with Walter Scott. Not 
long before the end, his biographer tells us, 
when on a border tour, two broken soldiers 
met him, and one of them, recognizing the Laird, 
bade ' God bless him.' Scott looked after their 
retreating figures, and 'planting his stick firmly 
on the sod,' repeated Prior's verses ' with- 
out break or hesitation.' They turn on that 
clinging love of life which outlives so much, 
and Lockhart saw plainly that the speaker 
applied them to himself. Here is the last 
stanza ; — 

' The Man in graver Tragic known 
(Tho' his best Part long since was done) 

Still on the Stage desires to tarry : 
And he who play'd the Harlequin, 
After the Jest still loads the Scene, 
Unwilling to retire, tho* weary.' ^ 

But the crown of Prior's achievement is cer- 
tainly the poem 'To a Child of Quality/ which 

1 Lockhart's ' Life of Scott,' chap. Ixxx. Sir Walter 
seems to have known Prior by heart, for this came at the 
end of a long string of quotations from * Alma * and 

* Solomon.' 



Matthew Prior. .267 

has won from Mr. Swinburne the praise of be- 
ing *the most adorable of nursery idyls that 
ever was or will be in our language.' We shall 
not do the reader the wrong of quoting it, but 
will close our list with another less-known and 
posthumously-printed address to a little girl, 
who was the daughter of the poet's friend, 
Edward Harley, and afterwards became Duchess 
of Portland : — 

• My noble, lovely, little Peggy, 
Let this, my First-Epistle, beg ye, 
At dawn of morn, and close of even, 
To lift your heart and hands to heaven : 
In double beauty say your pray'r, 
Our father first, then notre plre ; 
And, dearest Child, along the day, 
In ev'ry thing you do and say. 
Obey and please my Lord and Lady, 
So God shall love, and Angels aid, Ye. 

If to these Precepts You attend. 
No Second-Letter need I send, 
And so I rest Your constant Friend, 

M. P.' 

O 51 SIC omnia dixisset ! If he had oftener writ- 
ten as he has written of these two ' children of 
quality,' — if he had now and then written of 
women as reverently, — how large would have 
been his portion in our anthologies I As it is, 



268 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

he has left behind him not a few pieces which 
have never yet been equalled for grace, ease, 
good-humour, and spontaneity, and which are 
certain of immortality while there is any saving 
virtue in ' fame's great antiseptic — Style.' 



PUCKLE'S 'CLUB/ 

* '* A WELL-BRED man," says Sir James 
"^^ Puckle in his * Grey Cap for a Green 
Head,' ''will never give himself the liberty to 
speak ill of Women." ' Even though it should 
dignify the author of ' The Club ' (of which the 
above is but the sub-title) with a posthumous 
knighthood, this quotation, employed by Poe 
in opening his review of Mrs. Browning, de- 
serves to be recorded. Apart from the com- 
mendable sentiment, in a general dearth of 
information, almost any scrap of reference is 
welcome. And certainly, for a writer, who, 
more than a century after the date of his first 
appearance in type, received all the honours of 
impressions on satin, ' Chinese paper,' and col- 
oured ink, the fame of James Puckle has suf- 
fered unmerited eclipse. ' It was intended ' — 
says the Preface to the illustrated issue of 1817 
— ' to attach to this Edition a Sketch of the 
Author's Life, and in apology for its omission, 
the Reader is informed, that, every probable 
source of information having been searched, no 



270 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

Memoir or Account can be obtained that may 
be depended upon.' We are not much better 
instructed in the present year of grace. It is 
true that the same Preface mentions two of 
Ruckle's earlier essays, ' England's Interest ' 
[1696], and * England's Way to Wealth and 
Honour' [1699], as being in the British Mu- 
seum ; and it might, without much expenditure 
of research, have added that he was a Notary 
Public, since — to say nothing of the initials 
appended to his portrait in the third and fourth 
editions of 'The Club' — that fact is estab- 
lished in one of the works above mentioned, 
which the Preface-writer of 1817 was appar- 
ently too dispirited to consult. Fortunately a 
critic in the ' Gentleman's Magazine ' for March, 
1822, was more adventurous, and from a passage 
at the end of the earlier pamphlet, promptly 
discovered that Puckle was a partner in the 
firm of ' Pwc/c/^ and Jenkins^ Publick Notaries 
in Pope' s-he ad-alley over against the Royal Ex- 
change.' The same inquirer besides ascer- 
tained, by reference to the Rev. Mark Noble's 
continuation of Granger's ' Biographical His- 
tory' (vol. iii., p. 363), that Puckle, as 'a 
notary-public in chambers, possessed at one 
time, great reputation for integrity ; but prob- 
ably the love of scribbling seduced him from 



Puckle's * Club J 271 

what was more proper for his situation, than 
becoming a writer out of his chambers.' There 
is an accent of suppressed detraction about this 
utterance, but it is too vague to do harm. 

After the eiforts of Sylvanus Urban in 1822, 
Oblivion seems again to have scattered her 
poppy over Puckle's shadowy and fugitive per- 
sonality. Nothing of importance was added to 
his biography by S. W. Singer's reprint of ' The 
Club' in 1834 ; and it was not until 1872 that 
he was once more revealed to the curious. In 
that year a contributor to ' Notes and Queries,' 
who, under the initials ' G. S. S.,' had shown 
much minute familiarity with Puckle's bibliog- 
raphy, collected the result of his researches in 
a rare privately printed pamphlet of twenty 
pages entitled ^The Author of ''The Club" 
Identified.' ^ Besides bringing together all that 
was known on the subject, the writer, Mr. G. 
Steinman Steinman, of Croydon, established the 
further facts that Puckle was twice married, 
that he had several children, and that he died 
in July, 1724, being buried in the burial ground 
of St. Stephen's, Coleman Street. In addition 
to this, and much information respecting previ- 

1 See Part III., pp. 17 1-2, of Mr. Bertram Dobell's 
valuable * Catalogue of a Collection of Privately Printed 
Books,' 1891-3. 



272 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

ous Puckles not material to this paper, he 
found out that the author of ' The Club ' was 
also a South Sea Projector and that ' on May 
15th (4 Geo. I.) ' he obtained Letters Patent as 
the inventor of what reads like an anticipation 
of the Maxim or Nordenfeldt gun. But it was 
reserved to that unwearied investigator, Mr. 
Eliot Hodgkin of Richmond, to fill in the de- 
tails of this discovery. Mr. Hodgkin happened 
when in Paris upon an engraving, which not 
only delineated but described the piece of 
ordnance in question. It seems to have been 
a species of magnified revolver, mounted on a 
tripod. Its breach was turned by hand, and 
contained six or more chambers. These — the 
contents of which were successively discharged 
through a single long barrel — were removable, 
so that when one description of missile had been 
expended, another could be substituted for it. 
And here comes in the ' taste and fancy ' of 
Puckle. ' One set/ says Mr. Hodgkin, ' is 
depicted as intended for a ship shooting " Round 
Bullets against Christians ; " a second as one 
for " shooting Square Bullet against Turks." ' ^ 

1 'Notes and Queries,' 9 Nov., 1889. Mr. Hodgkin 
has since been good enough to permit the writer to 
inspect this curious design. 



Puckle's 'Club/ 273 

The apparatus was also available for ' Granado 
shells,' and was styled — 

A DEFENCE 

'Defending King George your Country and Lawes 

Is Defending Your Selves and Protestant Cause. 

Invented by Mr. lames Puckle 

For Bridges, Breaches, Lines and Passes 

Ships, Boats Houses, and other Places.' 

' Puckle's Machine,' as it was popularly chris- 
tened, did not escape the graphic satirist of 
1720. In a South Sea squib in the British Mu- 
seum, published by Bowles of St. Paul's Church- 
yard, and called the ' Bubler's Mirrour : or 
England's Folley,' — being ' A List of the Bub- 
bles with the prices they were Subscrib'd at 
and what each sold when highest : Together 
w**" Satirical Epigrams upon each by y* Author 
of y^ S-Sea Ballad,' — the shares are said to 
have been paid in at £4 and sold at ;£'8, which 
must have been profitable to Puckle. The 
relative Satyrical Eppigram is as follows : 

* A rare invention to Destroy the Crowd, 
Of Fools at Home instead of Foes Abroad : 
Fear not my Friends, this Terrible Machine, 
They 're only Wounded that have Shares therein.' 

A recent communication by Mr. George C. 
Boase to ' Notes and Queries ' (May 9th, 1896) 

iS 



2 74 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

shows us this ' rare invention ' in action. It is 
an extract from the ' London Journal ' for Sat- 
urday, March 31st, 1722, two years before 
Puckle's death : ' On Wednesday Sev'night last, 
in the Artillery Ground, was a Performance of 
Mr. Puckle's Machine; and 'tis reported for 
certain, that one man discharged it 63 times in 
seven Minutes, though all the while Raining ; 
and that it throws off either one large or sixteen 
Musquet Bullets at every Discharge, with very 
great force.' 

Beyond the above, and Mr. Hodgkin's treas- 
ure-trove, the only further reference to Puckle 
we have personally been able to trace is con- 
tained in an advertisement inserted in the ori- 
ginal issue of the 'Spectator' for June 25th, 
171 2 (No. 414). This — which is sandwiched 
between the announcement of ' a parcel of very 
fresh and fashionable Mechlin Lace,' and an- 
other of the selling off of a stock of Watered 
Tabbies, Farendines [?], Silk Night Gowns, 
and the like — chronicles the loss, 'in or near' 
Mr. Edward Smith's house at Iver by Uxbridge, 
of a necklace of Oriental pearls. If offered to 
be sold, or pawn'd,' purchasers are invited 'to 
stop it and the Party, ^ and give notice to Mr. 

1 Dean Alford found instances of what he calls this 
'especially offensive' use of 'party* in * Tobit ' (vi. 7), 



Puckle's 'Club.' 275 

James Puckle, a Notary Publick in Popes 
head Alley in CornhilL' The reward offered 
is Five Guineas ; but it is significantly added 
thai ' if the Person that has it will bring or send 
it to the same place he shall have the same Re- 
ward, and no Questions ask'd.' 

The literary masterpiece of James Puckle, 
Moralist, Notary Public, Projector, and Lost 
Property Agent — to which we now come — is 
a modest i2mo of seventy-eight pages, bearing 
the date of 171 1, the year of the establishment 
of the ' Spectator,' aforesaid. Its full title is : 
'The Club: Or, A Dialogue Between Father 
and Son. In Vino Veritas. London : Printed 
for the Author ; and Sold by S. Crouch, at the 
Corner of Pope's-head Ally in Cornhil. 171 1.' 
The Author's name, as will be observed, does 
not appear ; but on the leaf following the title- 
page is this votive inscription: 'To Micajah 
Perry, Esq. ; and the fragrant Memory of 
Thomas Lane Esq. ; Deceased ; and to Mr. 
Richard Perry, of London, Merchants : The 
following Dialogue (as a Pepper Corn Acknowl- 
edgement) is humbly Dedicated, by Their most 
Obliged and most Obedient Servant, James 

and the * Tempest ' (Act iii, sc. 2). Here is an eighteenth- 
century example. Indeed, Puckle himself uses it in de- 
scribing 'Detractor' (Ed. 1713, p. 13). 



276 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

PucKLE.' After this dedication comes ' The Pre- 
face,' which in the first edition began thus : — 

' No sooner had Erasmus put forth his excel- 
lent Enchiridion, but one cries, there 's more 
Devotion in the Book than in the Writer. 

' He that turns Author, or sets up for Knight 
of the Shire, must expect to have ail his Faults 
published with Additions. 

'Should any say, The Writer is an Argus 
abroad, a Mole at home. 

' It 's easily answer'd, Moses himself might 
take good Counsel from a Midianite.' 

These sententious 'forewords,' — omitted no 
doubt in view of the success of the volume — 
are not to be found in the later issues, for an 
account of which we are primarily indebted to 
Mr. Steinman, who affirms that he had inspected 
all the impressions he specifies, that of 1723 ex- 
cepted (which is to be found in the British 
Museum). There was, he says, a second issue 
of the book in 171 1 ; and there were two in 
171 3, one of which is said to be the 3rd ed. In 
1 72 1 came a Cork reprint of this ; then followed 
a fourth edition of 1723 (with supplementary 
' Maxims, Advice and Cautions,' etc.), being 
the last which could possibly have been revised 
by the Author; then two of 1733 'lettered 5th 
ed. ; ' then one without date, also ' lettered ^th 



Puckle's ' Club.' 277 

ed. ; ' and finally a Dublin issue of 1743 de- 
scribed as the seventh edition.^ With the issues 
of the present century we may, for the moment, 
dispense. The sub-title of ' A Grey-Cap for a 
Green-Head'^ was apparently first added in 
the impression of 1723 ; and in the same im- 
pression, the dedication to the three Virginia 
merchants was altered and enlarged to suit the 
fact that, by this time, both the Perrys, as well 
as Thomas Lane, were dead. The edition of 
171 3 contained a portrait of the author by 
George Vertue after Kneller's rival, J. B. Clos- 
terman, who died in that year. In the 1723 

1 The publication of this paper in periodical form has 
revealed the existence of a formidable rival to Mr. Stein- 
man in the person of Mr. George W. Kohlmetz, of 
Cleveland, Ohio, virho, in March, 1896, exhibited at the 
Rowfant Club in that city, a collection of no fewer than 
forty-two different copies of ' The Club,' a number of 
which were known to be unique. Among the rest was an 
edition issued from the * Yorick's Head ' in Philadelphia 
in 1795. ^r* Kohlmetz, we understand, contemplates a 
Bibliography of Puckle's treatise. 

2 Puckle seems to have borrowed this title from an 
earlier manual of parental counsel, the ' Cap of Gray 
Hairs for a Green Head,' which one Caleb Trenchfield, 
Gent., had put forth in 1671, and which had reached a 
fifth (London) edition in 17 10. There are other indica- 
tions that Puckle was familiar with Trenchfield's book, 
and had made use of it in compiling his own. 



278 Eighteenth Century yignettes, 

edition the same portrait was re-engraved by 
J. Cole. It represents a middle-aged worthy 
of the ordinary eighteenth-century type, wear- 
ing what his contemporary, Mr. Isaac Bicker- 
staff of the * Tatler,' calls 'a fair full-bottomed 
Periwigg.' 

From these unavoidably arid bibliographical 
details, however, it is time to turn to the book, 
itself, the scheme of which is of the simplest. 
The Father of the Dialogue leads off by asking 
his Son what made him so late the night before. 
The Son replies that he went with a friend to 
his (the friend's) club at the Noah's Ark, a sup- 
posititious hostelry which the topographer may, 
if he please, identify with that famous Pope's 
Head Tavern in Pope's Head Alley, once fre- 
quented by Pepys, where, seven years after the 
appearance of Puckle's editio princeps, James 
Quin had the ill-luck, in a quarrel forced upon 
him, to kill his would-be rival, the Irish actor 
Bowen. After a summary description of the 
guests who, in the low-pitched, evil-smelling 
room, sit drinking each other's healths * over 
the left thumb,' the Son proceeds to charac- 
terize them methodically in the manner of Theo- 
phrastus. This he does, not only individually, 
but alphabetically, e. g. Antiquary, Buffoon, 
Critick, Detractor, Envioso, Flatterer, Game- 



Puckle's 'Club.' 279 

ster, and so forth, — the twenty-four letters end- 
ing, as in duty bound, with Zany, the Vintner 
or landlord. As each portrait is finished, the 
Father, who must have had either much learn- 
ing or a preternatural memory, makes precep- 
tive and edifying comment upon the personage 
described, quoting freely from the Bible, ' St. 
Austin,' Bishop Sanderson, Montaigne, Maza- 
rin, and other sources. This, in the original 
editions, he does in abrupt — and to use a John- 
sonian word — decidedly 'oraculous' sentences. 
As thus : The Son says of his Antiquary, that 
' he pity'd the Ignorance of Modern Writers, 
and scorn'd to read any Book less than an 
Hundred Years old.' To this his Elder (who 
is obviously of the losing camp in the great 
controversy) replies dogmatically that * too ser- 
vile a Submission to the Books and Opinions of 
the Ancients, has spoil'd many an Ingenious 
Man, and plagu'd the World with abundance 
of Pedants and Coxcombs/ Occasionally his 
deliverances have something of the neatness of 
a French pensee. ' He whose Jests make others 
afraid of his Wit,' he says of Buffoon, ' had need 
be afraid of their Memory.' Not a few of the 
old gentleman's * wise saws and modern in- 
stances,' it has been pointed out, are to be 



28o Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

found in previous writers,^ and it has been 
noted that the Antiquary of Puckle, suggests 
the Antiquaries of Butler and Earle (of the 
* Micro-cosmographie '). But 'it's easily an- 
swered' — to use his own form of apology — 
that Earle and Overbury, as well as their com- 
mon predecessor, Bishop Hall (in his ' Char- 
acters Vertues and Vices/ 1608), all copied, in 
their turns, from Theophrastus ; and it is quite 
conceivable that the Pope's Head Alley philos- 
opher did not so much aim at absolute original- 
ity as at apposite recollection — a considerable 
amount of his proverbial wisdom being clearly 
the mere hiving of a common-place book.^ 
Concerning another charge which has been 
made against the author of ' The Club,' to wit, 
that he must have been a misogynist, because 
there is but one lady in his gallery, namely Xan- 

1 An unexpected confirmation of this has transpired 
since the present paper was first published. The aphor- 
ism just quoted (which, by the way, is not in the first 
edition) is 'conveyed' almost literally from Bacon: 'Cer- 
tainly, he that hath a Satyricall vaine, as he maketh 
others afraid of his Wit, so he had need be afraid of 
others Memory' ('Essays,' 1625, No. 32). 

2 He admits as much in the ' Preface * to an additional 
chapter on 'Death,* in the 4th ed. of 1723, adding — 'If 
the physick be proper, no matter what country produced 
the ingredients, nor who made up the dose.' 



Puckle's 'Club: 281 

tippe, the wife of Newsmonger, we hold it to 
be ill-founded. For even if the insinuation 
were not opposed to the praiseworthy utterance 
with which this paper opens, it is sufficiently 
negatived by the fact that one scarcely looks 
for women in a last-century Club of men. 

But it may be well to give a sample of the 
Puckle method, and his 'Critic' is perhaps as 
good a specimen as any. In this instance there 
is no recollection of Earle, whose type is the 
senseless scholiast — the ' bookful blockhead, 
ignorantly read/ with whom we meet in Pope. 
Neither is Puckle's portrait marked by the 
delightful ' Impertinencies ' of that fatuous Tom 
Folio whose masterly ' kit-cat ' had then so 
recently been drawn in the ' Tatler.' The 
* Critic ' of ' The Club ' belongs to a humbler 
variety. He is simply the mechanical fault- 
finder — the ' voluntary Mole' of Addison, con- 
genitally beauty-blind, who, 'wise enough (in 
his own Conceit) to correct the Magnificat,^ 
presumes to censure Cicero for verbosity, and 
Virgil for rustic language. 

' Plato (he told us) was neither Fertile, nor 
Copious ; Aristotle neither Solid, nor Substan- 
tial ; and Theophrastus neither Smooth, nor 
Agreeable. 

'That Voiiure was dull, Corneille a Stranger 



282 Eighteenth Century yignettes, 

to the Passions, Racine starch'd and affected, 
Moliere jejune, and Boileau little better than a 
Plagiary. 

' That Shakespear wanted Manners, Ben 
Jonson was a Pedant, Congreve a laborious 
Writer, and Garth but an indifferent Imitator 
of Boileau. 

' That Dry den s Absolom, and Achitophel, was 
a Poem [that] wanted Vigour of Thought, 
Purity of Language, and Aptness and Propriety 
of Expression ; nor were many of the Elisions 
to be allow'd, or Accents and Pauses duly 
observ'd. 

' An Instance being requir'd ; Critticone hung 
his Ears, and fell a cursing his Memory.' 

This description naturally affords the paternal 
commentator an opportunity of saying several 
edifying things. But none of his bursts of 
* scatter'd sapience ' is more to the point than 
the old-new illustration with which he concludes. 
It is borrowed from the Ragguagli di Parnasso of 
Trajan Bpccalini, a revised translation of which, 
under the title of ' Advices from Parnassus,' 
had been issued a few years earlier (1706) by 
John Hughes of the ^Spectator.' 'A Critic, 
presenting Apollo with a very severe Censure 
upon an Excellent Poem, was ask'd for the 
good Things in that Work : But the Wretch 



Puckle's 'Club: 283 

answering, He minded only its Errors ; Apollo 
ordered a Sack of unwinnowed Wheat to be 
brought, and Critic to pick out and take all the 
Chaff for his Pains.' 

In such a piebald collection as this of Puckle, 
the reader seeks naturally — as in Overbury — 
for some of those chance touches of minute 
local colouring which help to portray the man- 
ners of the times. But in this respect his 
pages are disappointing. Once, in the case of 
' Quack,' who is introduced ' with a supercilious 
Brow, Ebony Cane, and Band in Querpo,' a 
costume-piece (which is not achieved) appears 
to be impending. ' Youth,' again, is rather 
elaborately described at the outset as a ' Mush- 
room-Squire,' * accouter'd with a large Muif, 
long Peruke, dangling Cane, Sword, Snuff-Box, 
Diamond-Ring, Pick-tooth-Case, Silk Handker- 
chief, &c., all of the newest Fashion.' Also he 
is stated to have been in the habit of throwing 
back his wig * to discover the fine Ring in his 
Ear.' Beyond these, however, there is little 
indication of the dress or outward appearance of 
the company, of whose doings what approaches 
closest to a ' conversation ' is contained under 
the heading of 'Gamester.' Gamester — a 
' pretty Fellow ' whose chief care in life is to 
keep himself clear-headed enough to cheat his 



284 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

fellow-creatures at cards — comes to the Club 
after ten, 'well dress'd and power'd,' to inquire 
for Knave, who is his led-friend and accomplice. 
These 'Brethren in Iniquity,' employing — to 
preserve their wits — all the approved expedients 
of ' Finger-shade, Mouth-spirit, or Shoulder- 
dash,' contrive to drink but moderately until the 
rest grow mellow, and the glass circulates freely. 
Then the drawer is ordered to place cards and 
candles on the little table, and the pair adjourn 
to ' Whisk ' with ' Critic ' and ' Buffoon,' who, 
suffered to win at first, are speedily stripped not 
only of their money but their rings and watches, 
at which juncture, ' from the Gulphs of Despair 
in their Aspects, Angela might have finish'd his 
famous Piece of the Last Judgment.' Upon 
this the Father comments austerely : ' Well 
might he, that was ask'd the Difference between 
Aleator and Tesserarum Lusor, answer, the same 
that there is between Fur and Latro.' ^ Indeed 

1 One scarcely looks for an illustration of this dubious 
distinction in a black-letter Elizabethan sermon. Yet the 
kindness of Mr. A. W. Pollard has furnished us with the 
following : * I remember a tale concerning a theefe, that 
was indyted of felonie, for robbing by the highe wayes 
syde, and being indyted by the name of Latro was con- 
demned by y' name of Fur, for which the theefe quar- 
relled, and sayde the Judge had done him wrong. And 
when he would not cease exclamation Mayster Skelton 



Puckle's ' Cluh,' 285 

the old Gentleman's familiarity with the subject 
of gambling is remarkable, and suggests that his 
own juvenile experiences must have been pecu- 
liar or unusually varied. He describes in detail 
the different kinds of cogged dice : the ' Doc- 
tors ' and the ' FuUoms,' whose nefarious prop- 
erty is that they can be thrown high or low at 
will — the ingenious sub-varieties known as 
* Flats,' ' Bars,' and ' Cuts' — the ' Dice with 
their Edges polish'd oif, so as to make 'em run 
high' — the 'Chain-Dice' which are link'd to- 
gether, so as to Rattle in the Box, yet close 
enough to hide the Chain,' etc. He also 
dilates upon the ' several Sorts of false Boxes ' ; 
and lastly, upon the fraudulent devices known 
professionally as ' Top,' ' Peep,' ' Eclipse,' and 
'Thumbing,' by all of which, even ' supposing 
both Box and Dice fair,' the accomplished 
sharper, with the aid of a little sleight of hand, 
can still contrive to bamboozle his unfortunate 
' Cully.' 

the Poet, being a maister of wordes, and cunning in 
Grammar, was called to declare the difference between /«r 
and latro ; whose answer was, that he saw no great differ- 
ence between /i/r and /a/r^, saving this, that y«?' did sit on 
the bench, and latro stoode at the barre.' {'A Sermon 
[in Paules Church] of god's fearefull threatnings for 
Idolatrye . , . with a Treatise against Usurie/ by Rich- 
arde Porder (1570), p. (:&). 



286 Eighteenth Century yignettes. 

It is from the portrait of ' Rake ' that Poe 
borrows the quotation with which this paper 
opened. ' Rake,' by the way, inveighing 
against Matrimony, which, he says, men praise 
as they ' do good Mustard, with Tears in their 
Eyes,' is cleverly countered by Wiseman, who 
asks him gravely if his mother was ever married 
— a home-thrust which sets 'all the Company 
a Laughing.' Other prominent members of the 
Club are ' Traveller ' who has returned well 
versed ' in the amorous Smirk, the alamode 
Grin, the antic Bow,' etc., but has brought 
little else of any value with him from abroad ; 
and ' Projector,' to whom the Author, perhaps 
with an eye to the forthcoming ' Puckle's 
machine,' is somewhat lenient, since, while 
admitting that he has never yet ' oblig'd the 
World with any Thing so useful as a Mouse- 
Trap,' he writes him, not the less, of the race 
of Raleigh and Columbus. Towards the close of 
the volume, as the alphabet becomes exhausted, 
there is a scolding scene between ' Xantippe ' 
and her husband ' Newsmonger,' — the butt of 
most character-makers from Theophrastus down- 
wards. Then, with the small hours, 'Zany' 
the landlord falls to sing drinking songs, ' Youth ' 
babbles of his horses and dogs, ' Impertinent' 
and • Rake ' revile Religion and the Bible ; the 



Puckle's ' Cluh.* 287 

rest betake themselves to ribaldry and foolish 
noise. At length, after ' Youth ' has called for 
the fiddlers to make a night of it, he is mortally 
affronted by ' Moroso,' bottles and candlesticks 
are freely exchanged as missiles, ' Flatterer ' 
crawls under the table screaming ' Murder,' the 
Watch are summoned, and the combatants are 
carried off to cool in the nearest Compter. 
The Father and the Son nevertheless continue 
to converse. But the book henceforth is 
mainly occupied w^ith the reading by the latter 
of a long paper of dispersed precepts, compiled 
by * Wiseman ' for the benefit of his relative 
* Youth,' by v^^hom, it is to be feared, they were 
never perused. ^ Qui mo net amat,' says the 
closing epigraph : ^ Ave &^ Cave.' ^ 

^ The quotations in this paper, it should be stated, are 
taken, not from the modern (and modernized) versions, 
which, in their arrangement of type, etc., differ materially 
from the earlier issues, but from the edition of 1713, on 
which they are based. The copy used (in the possession 
of the present writer) has, moreover, a certain individual 
interest. From inscriptions on its title-page it seems to 
have been the identical volume presented for registration 
at the Stamp Office, Lincoln's Inn, in April, 1713, on 
the 29th of which month it was ' Registered & Entered 
According to y^ Statute [as] conteining Three Sheets & a 
halfe,* a duty of ys. thereupon being duly received, for 
the Receiver-General, by one J. Sharp. Its margins are 
crowded in places with MS. additions and corrections, for 



288 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

That Puckle's ' Club ' can now ever have a 
modern public may reasonably be doubted, un- 
less, indeed, it be recruited from those who — 
like Horace Walpole in his old age — read only 
what nobody else would read. * Le style en est 
vleux' — as Alceste says in the song; and the 
scheme is scarcely skilful. Nor can the writer 
be said to exhibit any marked aptitude for char- 
acter-building ; while it must be confessed that 
the majority of his maxims have the peculiarly 
musty flavour of the pre-Addisonian morality. 
But the book is honest and well-meaning ; and 
its author's good intention is unquestioned. 
Towards the middle of the last century its vogue 
had apparently become exhausted, since there 
are no records of any English editions subse- 
quent to that of 1743. In 1817, however, the 
text of 171 3 was rather unaccountably selected 

the most part cancelled on second thoughts, but appar- 
ently in Puckle's own handwriting. Thus, after 'Talk 
not much of your self, for tho' it be done so as not to 
argue Pride, yet it may Ignorance of worthier Subjects,' 
is inserted, and then run through, ' Laus Proprio Sordescit 
in Ore.' Again, on page the last, after ' Because you 
find any Thing difficult to practise, don't presently con- 
clude you can't Master it ' — comes, in MS., ' in gallant 
Spirits Difficulty doth but whet Desire.' This is not 
crossed out ; though it does not seem to have found its 
way into any subsequent impression. 



Puckle's 'Club/ 289 

by a Mr. Edward Walmsley, described by 
Singer as ' a gentleman whose taste led him to 
the love of embellished books,' as the medium 
for a series of illustrations by John Thurston, 
who, at that date, practically monopolized de- 
signs for the wood. Thurston prepared, and 
drew on the block, head- and tail-pieces for 
each of Puckle's characters ; and he also added 
a title-page exhibiting ' The Club ' at the mo- 
ment of the final fracas between ' Youth ' and 

* Morose' His compositions are good exam- 
ples of his skilful but very mannered style, and 
they were beautifully reproduced by the graver. 
The title-pages, which was intrusted to that 
prince of craftsmen, John Thompson, is one of 
the most successful specimens of his work, and 
he also engraved several of the head-pieces, e.g. 
' Antiquary,' ' Flatterer,' ' Wiseman,' ' Usurer,' 

* Xantippe,' etc. Others were executed by 
some of Bewick's pupils, — ' Quack ' and * Zany ' 
being by Charlton Nesbit, then living in retire- 
ment at his native place, Swalwell ; ' Buffoon,' 
by Henry White ; and the tail-piece to ' Xan- 
tippe ' by William Harvey, soon to be the pro- 
lific and popular successor of Thurston, but in 
1817 only just landed in London as a raw lad 
from Newcastle. The rest of the engravings 
were by the two Branstons ; by Hole's pupil, 

19 



290 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

William Hughes ; and by Mary Byfield (sister 
of the John Byfield who, with Bonner, did Hol- 
bein's ' Dance of Death ' for Francis Douce). 
To Miss Byfield was intrusted the design for 
' Rake.' Great stress is laid in the Preface 
upon the manner of these performances, and it 
is clear that — some modern authorities notwith- 
standing — they professed to be in exact fac- 
simile of Thurston's originals. ' Every line of 
the drawing is marked out upon the block by 
the Designer, exactly as it appears upon the 
paper ; from this delineation it is the province 
of the Engraver to cut out a perfect and well- 
wrought resemblance ; to effect which, great 
ability is requisite, as the least deviation is irre- 
mediable, especially when what is technically 
termed cross-hatching occurs, as is fully exempli- 
fied in the decoration of this volume.' It was 
further stated that, in the effort after perfection, 
* four beautiful Designs ' had been ruthlessly 
thrown aside on account of deviations by the 
engraver, and re-traced upon fresh blocks. 
The book, which has a copper-plate portrait by 
Thomas Bragg after Vertue's print of Puckle, 
is tastefully printed by John Johnson of Clerk- 
enwell and Typographia, and it was issued in 
several forms. Besides an ordinary edition of 
500 copies, there were 200 on large paper ; 18 



Puckle's * Club.' 291 

on white, and 7 on yellow Chinese paper ; 7 
on satin, and 3 in coloured inks. In 1820 the 
illustrations were struck off from the original 
blocks without text, and in different tints ; in 
1834, they were again used for Singer's edition, 
which was printed at the Chiswick Press. In 
the story of the revival of wood-engraving, the 
Puckle's 'Club' of 1817 comes honourably 
between the Ackermann's ' Religious Emblems ' 
of 1809, and Bewick's ' Fables of iEsop ' in 
18 18. ' Bewick, Mr. T., Newcastle Tyne,' it 
may be added, figures in the ' List of Subscrib- 
ers,' and his copy was among the books sold at 
the Bewick sale of February, 1884. 



MARY LEPEL, LADY HERVEY. 

T"! /"E have it on record that a celebrated whip 
• * of fiction, Mr. Tony Weller, taught in 
the har-d school of experience, solemnly advised 
his son Samuel never to marry a Widow. But 
it is, perhaps, not so well known that another 
eminent (and not fictitious) ' handler of the rib- 
bons ' entertained as confirmed an objection to 
a less insidious branch of the Beautiful Sex. 
The coachman at that ' pouting-placeof Princes,' 
Leicester House, not only enjoined his heir 
never to take to wife a Maid of Honour, but, 
emphasizing that injunction by a substantial 
money penalty, lent to it all the peculiar and 
melancholy interest attaching to a death-bed 
wish. Upon condition that the young man 
complied with his desires, he bequeathed him 
a sum of three hundred pounds. This careful 
forethought in face of an obviously remote con- 
tingency seems to argue a deep-rooted prejudice 
on the testator's part against the ladies he had 
been privileged to drive. That — in so far as 
history affords information — the Maidsof Hon- 
our under Anne and the first two Georges were 



Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey» 293 

fully entitled to the epithet ' gamesome,' which 
Tennyson gives to the charming heroine of the 
' Talking Oak,' may, perhaps, be admitted, and 
even expected. Well born, good looking, and 
high spirited, they were condemned to a life in 
which yawning and wearisome etiquette must 
have predominated, and it may be conceived 
that, in their hours of ease, they were likely to 
be especially ' aggravating ' to the long-suffering 
charioteer whose duty it was to carry them 
hither and thither, cheapening brocades and 
sarsnets like Steele's ' silkworm,' or travelling 
on a circuit of interminable ' How-dees.' When 
they were not hunting, or eating the perpetual 
Westphalia ham which Pope has included among 
their crosses, they probably enjoyed what — in 
that vulgar speech of which Lord Chesterfield 
deplored the use — would now be characterized 
as ' an uncommonly good time.' Clever poets, 
like Gay and Prior, wrote them verses as gal- 
lantly turned and as metrically impudent as any 
'couplets' contrived under Louis the Mag- 
nificent ; wits like Chesterfield and Pulteney 
treated them to elaborate raillery and mock- 
heroic adulation ; grave humorists, like Arbuth- 
not and Swift, not only drew up mocking 
* proposals ' to publish their biographies (by 
subscription), but undertook in addition to prove 



294 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

that they made the best wives, — which, as a 
general proposition, was probably a specimen 
of the form of rhetoric described by the excel- 
lent Mrs. Slipslop as * ironing.' But, if some 
of them were frivolous and some were frail, 
there were also some, especially in the prince- 
ship of the second George, who, besides being 
lively and attractive, were accomplished and 
sensible as well, and who, as a matter of fact, 
did develop into exemplary helpmates. Such, 
for example, was that bonny, good-humoured 
Mary Bellenden, ' fair and soft as down,' who 
ultimately became Duchess of Argyll ; such, 
again, the ' beautiful Molly Lepel ' who forms 
the subject of this paper. Others have written 
of this lady ; and she has been praised by 
Thackeray. But about her later life not very 
much has been said, and the few new facts con- 
tained in the recently-published ' Diary ' and 
* Letter Books of the first Earl of Bristol ' seem 
to warrant some fresh attempt to revive the 
memory of one who has been cited upon good 
authority as the perfect model of a finely-pol- 
ished woman of fashion. Of itself this would, 
perhaps, be scarcely a sufficient excuse for a 
new study. But Lady Hervey, like Mrs. 
Primrose's wedding-gown, was not merely con- 
spicuous for a ' glossy surface.' She had other 



Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey. 295 

qualities of a more durable and less external 
character. 

A certain enjoyment and vivacity of manner, 
coupled with a habit of speaking playfully of 
France as if it were her native country, seem 
to have led to the tradition that Miss Lepel was 
of Gallic extraction. Following this clue, the 
indefatigable Mr. Croker, discovering that the 
Lepelles or Le Pelleys were lords of Sark, made 
the suggestion that she must have belonged to 
this family ; and what Mr. Croker stated as a 
plausible conjecture was, of course, immediately 
converted into an established fact. But, even 
in the very correspondence he was annotating, 
Lady Hervey says expressly that the Sark Le 
Pelleys were no relations of hers, and the 
Rev. S. H. A. Hervey, who edited the Bristol 
Papers, satisfied himself that she was right. 
After much investigation he came to the con- 
clusion that her father, Nicholas Wedig Lepel, 
page in 1684 to Prince George of Denmark 
(husband of the Princess Anne), and after- 
wards an officer in the English army, was not 
of French but of Danish or North German 
descent. In August, 1698, Mr. Lepel married 
Miss Mary Brooke, daughter and sole heiress 
of John Brooke, of Rendlesham, in Suffolk, 
deceased, who brought him a dowry of ;f 20,000. 



296 Eighteenth Century yignettes. 

His daughter was born in September, 1700, 
and nine years after he was made a Brigadier- 
General, which is almost all that we know of 
Nicholas Lepel. But, according to the Duch- 
ess of Marlborough, he was lucky enough to 
obtain for his daughter, even from her birth, 
the rank, or rather the pay, of a cornet of horse, 
which pay, according to the same not unim- 
peachable authority. Miss Lepel continued to 
draw until the absurdity of a Maid of Honour 
figuring as a Gentleman of the Army became 
too manifest to be maintained. Whether this 
be true or not — and the pen of Sarah Jennings 
is not precisely that of a recording angel — it is 
clear that she must have become a Maid of 
Honour at the earliest possible age. And it is 
equally clear, though the records of her service 
in this capacity are of the scantiest, that she 
was a popular favourite from the beginning. 
*Tell dear Molly I love her like any thing,' 
writes in 1716 to Mrs. Howard (afterwards 
Lady Suffolk) the widow of that Lord Mohun 
who was killed in a duel with the Duke of 
Hamilton. Another glimpse of her is contained 
in a letter from Pope to Teresa and Martha 
Blount in the following year. (Mr. Carruthers 
is uncharitable enough to suggest that it was 
inserted with the special intention of making 



Mary Lepel^ Lady Hervey. 297 

his correspondents jealous.) After telling them 
that Miss Bellenden and Miss Lepel had, ' con- 
trary to the laws against harbouring Papists,' 
entertained him at Hampton Court, he goes on, 
* I can easily believe, no lone house in Wales, 
with a mountain and a rookery, is more contem- 
plative than this Court ; and as a proof of it, I 
need only tell you Mrs. L[epel] walked with 
me three or four hours by moonlight, and we 
met no creature of any quality but the King 
[George I.], who gave audience to the Vice- 
Chamberlain, all alone, under the garden wall.'^ 
The bard of Twickenham was not the only poet 
who took pleasure in the society of these girl- 
ish beauties. They were subscribers to Prior's 
great folio of 171 8, and John Gay must have 
been among their intimates, for a year later he, 
too, sends to Mrs. Howard (who was bed- 
chamber woman) his respects to both, in addi- 
tion to which he joins their names in his ' Damon 
and Cupid.' ' So well I 'm known at Court' — 
says his modish Georgian deity — 

' None ask where Cupid dwells, 

But readily resort 
To B n's or L IPs: 

^ It is impossible to quote Pope's letters with perfect 
confidence. This anecdote has been accepted as histori- 



298 Eighteenth Century yignettes. 

He also refers to the latter lady with greater 
felicity, in ' Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece.' 
In one of his most poetical lines, he couples her 
with * Hervey, fair of face,' as ' Youth's young- 
est daughter, sweet Lepell.' 

This conjunction in Gay's verses seems to 
imply that Mr. Hervey's name was already 
linked to Miss Lepel's in the minds of those 
who knew them, and not without reason. 
Early in 1720 — the year of that completion of 
the 'Iliad' which prompted Gay's poem — the 
lady had been ill, for in March Pope tells 
Broome that he had been constantly engaged 
in attending her during her convalescence at 
Twickenham. Of the nature of this indisposi- 
tion he says nothing ; but in the following 
month she was married privately to Lord Bris- 
tol's second son, the John Hervey above re- 
ferred to. Hitherto, the date of this occurrence 
has been more or less matter of guess-work, 
but the publication of her father-in-law's diary 
removes all ground for uncertainty. Under 
date of April 21, 1720, is the following entry 
by the Earl. * Thursday, my dear & hopeful 

cal, and it probably is so. But it is only right to state 
that a year later it re-appears, moonlight, rookery and 
all, but without Miss Lepel and the Vice-Chamberlain, in 
a letter to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. 



Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey, 299 

son Mr. John Hervey was marryed to Mrs. 
Mary Le Pell.' The marriage was not at first 
avowed. ' I met Madam Lepell coming into 
town last night/ writes Mrs. Bradshaw to Mrs. 
Howard on August 21 following. 'She is a 
pretty thing, though she never comes to see 
me ; for which, tell her, I will use her like a 
dog in the winter;' a passage that — besides 
supplying in its last words unexpected confir- 
mation of the accuracy of Swift's ' Polite Con- 
versation ' • — shows clearly that at this time the 
facts were still unknown to many friends.^ The 
suggested reason for secrecy is that Miss Bel- 
lenden had also contracted a clandestine alli- 
ance with Colonel Campbell, and that the two 
couples had * for mutual support agreed to 
brave the storm together,' — the storm antici- 
pated being apparently the royal anger. In 
Miss Lepel's case, at all events, it cannot have 
been parental. ' My son,' writes Lord Bristol, 
'has shown ye nicest skill in choosing you, 
since in you alone he could securely promise 

^ An earlier letter makes this plainer still. Writing 
to Mrs. Howard on April 31, ten days afier the marriage, 
Mrs. Molesworth says : * Pray give my service to Miss 
Lepell, and tell her I am glad I did not hear of her illness 
until it was over. I believe it would have saved Mr. 
Harvey a great deal of pain if he could have been as 
ignorant of it' (* Suffolk Corr.,' 1824, i. 53). 



300 Eighteenth Century yignettes. 

himself not only every quality essential to his 
own happiness, but has also made a wise pro- 
vision to intaile good sense and virtue (its con- 
stant concomitant) on our (now) flourishing 
family.' The date of this letter is May 20, but 
from an editorial note it appears that the mar- 
riage was not publicly announced until Octo- 
ber 25, or five months later. How it was 
received by the Court does not transpire. But 
as it involved the resignation of the two brides, 
it effectually broke up the little coterie at Hamp- 
ton, and put an end for ever to those pastoral 
delights of fri\eliiation, flirtation^ and danglea- 
tion, which, in a letter addressed years after- 
wards to Lady Hervey, Mrs. Howard includes 
among the unforgettable diversions of Wren's 
formal palace by the Thames. 

Lord Bristol, who, from his courteous and 
very copious correspondence, must have been 
not only an accomplished and a scholarly, but 
an affectionate and a singularly amiable man, 
appears from the first to have appreciated his 
son's wife. In the letter quoted he hopes that 
the newly-married pair will prolong his * declin- 
ing dales ' (he was then fifty-five, and he lived 
to be eighty-two) by residing with him. His 
letters to his 'dear daughter' are always couched 
in the most cordial terms, and it is evident that 



Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey, 301 

Lady Hervey became genuinely attached to 
him. But as regards her husband, one has 
certainly to fortify oneself by the recollection 
of Horace and his sic visum Veneri. Every- 
thing that one hears of the brilliant and cynical 
John Hervey, with his * coffin-face' and his 
painted cheeks, his valetudinarian, anaemic 
beauty, and his notorious depravity of life, 
makes it difficult to understand what particular 
qualities in him — apart from opportunity and 
proximity — could possibly have attracted the 
affection of a young and very charming woman, 
who was besides far in advance of her contem- 
poraries in parts and education. Yet it must 
be remembered that 

* — when Hervey the handsome was wedded 
To the beautiful Molly Lepell ' 

(as the ballad has it), he was only four-and- 
twenty ; that it was not until thirteen years 
later that Pope began to attack him as ' Lord 
Fanny,' and that the same poet's portrait of 
'Paris'^ — a passage of matchless malignity — 
is a year later still. His health, besides, was 
not yet broken ; and it is probable that at this 
date he exercised to the full that extraordinary 
gift of fascination which captivated Queen 

^ Afterwards altered to * Sporus.' 



302 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

Caroline and Lady Mary, made of his father 
his blind and doting admirer, and secured the 
love and respect of a wife, to whom in point of 
fidelity he was by no means a pattern husband. 
Perhaps in later years the respect was stronger 
than the love. Of the early days of wedlock, 
however, this could not be said. More than 
a twelvemonth after marriage — according to 
Lady Mary — the billing and cooing of the pair 
still continued with such unabated ardour as to 
oblige that austere on-looker to take flight for 
Twickenham. But, as Lady Mary candidly 
says, her own talents did not lie in this direc- 
tion, and she is scarcely an unprejudiced 
observer. 

For nearly twenty years we practically lose 
sight of Mr. Hervey's wife. As has already 
been said, her Maid-of-Honourship came to an 
end with her marriage, and for a long time she 
was rarely at Court, although her husband, in 
his capacity as Lord Chamberlain, was almost 
continuously in attendance on the Queen. It 
is probable that she was frequently with his 
parents at Ickworth ; and Lord Bristol's diary 
for several years continues to record methodi- 
cally the births of sons and daughters, with the 
names of the illustrious sponsors who in each 
instance ' answered for them.' In November, 



Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey, 303 

1723, Carr, Lord Hervey, died at Bath, and 
Mr. Hervey became Lord Hervey. Five years 
later he went abroad for his health, remaining 
absent for more than a year, during which time 
his wife was left behind in her father-in-law's 
house to mourn his absence, which, from ex- 
pressions to Mrs. Howard, she seems to have 
done very genuinely. It is, indeed, chiefly from 
the Suffolk correspondence that we gain our 
information about her at this time. Some of 
her letters are written in a spirit of levity which 
does not always show her at her best, although 
she is uniformly amiable and lively. From one 
of these epistles we get the oft-quoted picture 
of Swift's ' Mordanto ' — Lord Peterborough, 
strolling about Bath in boots in defiance of 
Nash and the proprieties, cheapening a chicken 
and cabbage in all the splendours of his blue 
ribbon and star, and then sauntering away un- 
concernedly to his lodgings with his marketings 
under his arm. In another despatch from Ick- 
worth we find a reference to Arbuthnot^ whom 
Lady Hervey trusts may not at Tunbridge either 
lose his money at quadrille or over-indulge in 
his favourite John Dory — a taste which he 
shared with Quin and Fielding. Here and 
there one detects traces of her love for reading, 
although her correspondents are not bookish. 



304 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

There are also pleasant and affectionate refer- 
ences to her children. But with her mother-in- 
law, Lady Bristol, if we are to believe certain 
indications in the Suffolk correspondence, she 
does not seem to have been always on amicable 
terms. ' Pray,' she says to Mrs. Howard, 
'when you are so kind as to write to me, get 
sometimes one body, sometimes another, to 
direct your letters ; for curiosity being one of 
the reigning passions in a certain person ' [obvi- 
ously, from the contest. Lady Bristol], ' I love 
prodigiously both to excite and to baffle it.' 

From this utterance and other passages, it is 
clear that Lady Hervey's relations with Lady 
Bristol were at times considerably strained, 
and, indeed, if contemporary gossip is to be 
trusted, the antagonism of the two occasionally 
ripened into actual warfare. But there were 
also apparently peaceful interspaces, and Lady 
Suffolk is informed, as an item of extraordinary 
' news out of the country,' that for a whole fort- 
night Lady Bristol has been all civility and 
kindness. ' I am become first favourite,' writes 
Lady Hervey. ' It would puzzle a poet to find 
anything soft, kind, and sweet enough to liken 
her to it — down, turtle-doves, and honey, are 
faint images of her disposition.' But this can 
only have been a 'Martin's summer' of the 



Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey. 305 

elder lady's goodwill, for a letter two years later 
contains a most sarcastic picture of her infirmi- 
ties, both physical and mental. Probably, in 
this bellum plusquam civile, there was much — 
to quote Sir Roger de Coverley — to be said on 
both sides. Lady Hervey was too clever a 
woman not to see and accentuate Lady Bristol's 
weak points, and she had considerable gifts as 
an observer when her critical powers were 
excited. On the other hand. Lady Bristol was 
by no means deficient in ability. She was both 
witty and vivacious, and her copious letters to 
her lord during her absences at Bath and at 
Court (she was a Lady of the Bedchamber to 
the Princess Caroline), if, as her editor admits, 
scarcely literary, are at all events fluent and 
natural. They are extravagant in their expres- 
sions of affection, and those of Lord Bristol are 
equally so. But the pair in many respects were 
a curious contrast. She was a courtier, he was 
a country gentleman ; he delighted in domes- 
ticity and fresh air, she in Bath and the racket 
of the ill-ventilated Pump Room ; she gambled 
freely ; he had forsworn cards. To these pecu- 
liarities on the lady's part may be added a pas- 
sion for dosing herself with rhubarb on the 
slightest provocation ; a temper as sensitive as 
a barometer, and a gift of tears which equalled 

20 



3o6 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

that of Loyola. Yet to the end the letters of 
this apparently ill-matched husband and wife 
are those of newly-married persons, and they 
occupy two quarto volumes. 

In May, 1741, Lady Bristol died suddenly 

* of a fitt which seized her as she was taking the 
air in her Sedan in St. James's Parke,' — the 
Sedan in question being, as her editor suggests, 
possibly that very specimen which still stands in 
the entrance hall of No. 6, St. James's Square, 
a house which Lady Hervey must often have 
visited during her father-in-law's tenancy of it.^ 
With this event Lord Bristol's letters to his 

* ever new Delight ' naturally ceased, and he 
does not seem to have lamented his loss with 
the same 'terrific length and vehemence ' of 
epistolary regret which, in the case of his first 
wife, had provoked the rebukes of his father. 
Two years later he suffered a fresh bereavement 
in the death of Lord Hervey, when Lady Her- 
vey became a widow. Both by his wife and his 
father Lord Hervey was sincerely mourned. 
But Lady Hervey refrained from verifying the 
old saying that short widowhoods follow happy 
matches, since, although still, to quote her 
husband's couplet to Lady Mary, — 

^ It still belongs to the Bristol family, but was re-built 
in 1819-22. 



Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey, 307 

* — in the noon of life — those golden days 
When the mind ripens ere the form decays/ 

she never again entered the married state. At 
Lord Hervey's death, her eldest son George, 
who was twenty, had become a soldier, not 
entirely with the approval of his grandfather, 
who hated standing armies. Lepel, her eldest 
daughter — ' a fine black girl,' Horace Walpole 
calls her — was already married to Mr. Con- 
stantine Phipps, afterwards Lord Mulgrave, 
while her second son Augustus, later one of the 
two husbands of a later Maid of Honour, Miss 
Elizabeth Chudleigh, was already a midshipman 
in the navy. After Augustus came another 
daughter, Mary, a girl of eighteen, and then 
two little boys — Frederick, who lived to be 
Bishop of Derry, and William, a general in the 
army.^ These last two were under the charge 
of a country clergyman, the Rev. Edmund 
Morris ; and it is to Lady Hervey's prolonged 
correspondence with this gentleman, which 
extends from September, 1742, to a month or 
two before her death, that we are mainly in- 
debted for our further knowledge of her life. 
These letters were published in 1821, with a 
brief memoir and notes by Mr. Crocker. Sub- 

1 There were two other daughters, Emily and Caroline, 
who died unmarried. 



3o8 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

sequent to Lord BristoPs death, they are dated 
from different places, but up to that time the 
majority went out from the Suffolk family seat 
at Ickworth. 

Ickworth, or Ickworth Hall, where Lord 
Hervey died, was not the ancestral home of 
the Herveys, which, from various reasons, had 
been allowed to fall into decay. It was a farm- 
house in the vicinity, to which in April, 1702, 
Lord Bristol (then plain John Hervey) had 
brought his second wife pending the construc- 
tion of a better building. But the arrival of a 
large second family made architectural improve- 
ments impossible, and the gradually transformed 
and extended farmhouse became the * sweet 
Ickworth ' to which Lady Hervey's father-in- 
law refers so often in his Diary. From the 
copy of an old oil-painting prefixed to the vol- 
ume containing this record, it seems to have 
been a straggling and battlemented building, 
standing in a well-wooded park, and having 
that profusion of chimneys which is popularly 
supposed to indicate hospitality and good house- 
keeping. To the left, facing the spectator, is a 
garden with a sundial, perhaps the very inclo- 
sure which Lady Hervey describes to Mr. 
Morris as containing such a show of flowers 
and sweet shrubs, and to which her care had 



Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey. 309 

attracted so numerous a colony of birds. Here 
also she no doubt planted the rosary mentioned 
in another letter, which included ' all the sorts 
of roses there are ' — apparently, in 1747, a col- 
lection of no more than fifty. Her life at Ick- 
worth must have been a thoroughly peaceful 
one, and, when she was not occupied in her 
correspondence with her friends and children, 
absorbed almost wholly by reading, gardening, 
riding, or nursing Lord Bristol, whose infirm- 
ities (he was now over seventy) had greatly 
increased with age. Such glimpses as we get 
of him exhibit a most affectionate and polite old 
gentleman, much attached to his home and his 
family, but sadly preoccupied with dismal fore- 
bodings as to the inevitable collapse of the king- 
dom. Lady Hervey, who frequently acted as 
his amanuensis, was evidently very fond of him, 
but her distaste for these wearisome jeremiads, 

* which she sometimes hisses, and sometimes 
parodies,' peeps out repeatedly in her letters. 

* When I remind Lord Bristol how long it is 
since he bespoke my tears for my ruined country y 
he shakes his head and says, " Ay, madam I but 
it is nearer and nearer, and must happen at last," 
therefore, according to his method, one should 
begin to weep for one's children as soon as they 
are born; for they must die at last, and every 



3IO Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

day brings them nearer to it. Let his lordship 
be a disciple of Heraclitus if he will ; I prefer 
Democritus, and should be glad to have you of 
the same sect. Ride si sapis ! ' 

Speaking in his ' Verses on his Own Death ' 
of Woolston's works, Swift says : — 

'Those Maids of Honour who can read, 
Are taught to use them for their creed.' 

Here is a quondam Maid of Honour who could 
not only read, but quote the ancients at large. 
Lady Hervey (as Lord Chesterfield affirmed) 
* understood Latin perfectly well/ and her let- 
ters to Mr. Morris are freely sprinkled with 
citations from Horace and Tully (which Mr. 
Croker obligingly translates). Often they are 
exceedingly appropriate, as when presently she 
applies to Lord Bristol the Plus dolet quam 
necesse est, qui ante dolet quam necesse est of 
Seneca. In the lines that precede she defines 
her own placid philosophy. ' I cannot,' she 
says, speaking of politics, * like some people, 
pass the whole day in sighing, fretting, or scold- 
ing about them : I have but a little more time 
in this world, and I choose rather to follow 
Anacreon's advice, and — 

* Of a short life the best to make 
And manage wisely the last stake.* 



Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey. 311 

The same feeling comes out in her first letter, 
d, propos of Young's then recently published 
' Night Thoughts.' They are excellent, no 
doubt, but she does not intend to read them 
again. * I do not like to look on the dark side 
of life, and shall always be thankful to those 
who turn the bright side of that lantern to me.' 
It was a similar attitude of mind which predis- 
posed her towards France and things French, 
where she found that perpetual sunlight and 
good humour which constituted her fitting en- 
vironment. * Here,' she says, later, of Paris, 
* are coteries to suit one in every humour (ex- 
cept a melancholy one) ; ' and in the same letter 
she praises a theological discussion as having 
been conducted with warmth enough for spirit, 
and not heat enough for ill-temper. In her own 
religious opinions she evidently inclined to the 
esprits forts, and she had naturally been some- 
what influenced by the opinions of Lord Her- 
vey and the free-thinking writers in vogue at 
the Court of the Princess of Wales. Mr. 
Croker sighs a little over her unorthodox but 
intelligible partiality for Dr. Conyers Middle- 
ton, whose * Life of Cicero' had not only been 
dedicated to her husband, but even purged by 
his editorial pen from many of those ' low words 
and collegiate phrases,' of which, with Lord 



312 Eighteenth Century Wignettes. 

Chesterfield, Lady Hervey had a horror.^ But 
her good sense and her good taste alike recoiled 
from the senseless political parodies of the liturgy 
which were current circa 1743, and which even 
Walpole so far forgot himself as to imitate in 
his ' Lessons for the day.' 

Sound sense and an eminently practical intel- 
ligence are conspicuous features of these epis- 
tles, and not alone in their comments upon the 
retention of the Hanoverian troops, and upon 
the other political complications which wrung 
the withers of Lord Bristol. In that earth- 
quake mania of 1750, which Mr. Croker de- 
scribes as ' unusually rabid and contagious,' 
Lady Hervey seems to have kept her head, as 
she also did in that other minor madness which 
agitated so many people four years later — the 
case of Elizabeth Canning. She regarded it, 
and rightly, ' as, on her [Canning's] part, one 
of the silliest, worse formed, improbable stories 
she ever met ' — which is very much the modern 
verdict. In her literary leaning there is the 
same bias to the concrete and the tangible. 
Unlike the friend of her youth. Lady Mary, 
she wholly eschewed the old romances of 

1 Middleton practically confirms this by saying, in his 
Dedication, that the book owes its * correctness to Your 
[Lord Hervey's] pencil.' 



Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey, 313 

Scudery and the rest, and even swelled her 

* Index Expurgatorius ' by classing with them 
political Utopias like the ' Oceana ' of Harring- 
ton. Of * Tristram Shandy,' in common with 
Goldsmith, Walpole, and other of her contem- 
poraries, she could make nothing. To her it 
seemed but a ' tiresome unsuccessful attempt at 
humour,' only relieved by the excellent sermon 
of Mr. Yorick, which read like the work of 
another author.^ On the other hand she studies 
attentively such works as Swift's ' Battle of the 
Books,' Brown's 'Estimate,' Berkeley's 'Tar 
Water,' Rousseau's ' Emile,' Bolingbroke's 

* Letters on History,' Montesquieu, Davila, 
and the Cardinal de Retz — the last of whom 
she calls her favourite author (she had read him 
six or seven times), devoting, indeed, more of 
her time to commentaries on his Memoirs than 
her editor thinks desirable, since there are large 
excisions at this stage of her correspondence. 
It is d propos of one of the Cardinal's heroes, 
the Prince of Cond6, that she digresses into the 
following excursus on good humour and good 
nature, which is a fair specimen of her style in 

1 Home was more fortunate with her, for according to 
Lord Haddington (as reported by Scott), she wept like an 
infant over the manuscript of ' Douglas ' {' Quarterly Re- 
view/ Ixxxvi, 204). 



314 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

this way. * As I take it' (she says), 'good 
nature is a quality of the soul, good temper of 
the body : the one always feels for everybody, 
the other frequently feels for nobody. Good 
tempers are often soured by illness or disap- 
pointments, good nature can be altered by 
neither : one would choose the one in a compan- 
ion, the other in a friend. I judge good nature 
to be the effect of tenderness, and good temper 
to be the consequence of ease and cheerfulness : 
the first exerts itself in acts of compassion and 
beneficence, the other shows itself in equality 
of humour and compliance.' 

In Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son, a 
long paragraph is devoted to Lady Hervey, to 
whom he gives young Stanhope an introduction. 
The time of writing is October 22, 17^0, at 
which date she was in Paris, where indeed she 
seems to have resided until the close of the fol- 
lowing year. His lordship's admiration of his 
old friend is unbounded. ' She has been bred 
all her life at courts,' he says ; * of which she 
has acquired all the easy good-breeding, and 
politeness, without the frivolousness. She has 
all the reading that a woman should have ; and 
more than any woman need have ; for she un- 
derstands Latin perfectly well, though she 
wisely conceals it.' [Lord Chesterfield had 



Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey. 315 

obviously not seen her correspondence with 
Mr. Morris, where it is rather en dpidence.] 
* No woman ' (he goes on) ' ever had more than 
she has, le ton de la parfaitement bonne com- 
pagnie, les manUres engageanteSf et le je ne sgais 
quoi qui plait,' and he bids his awkward offspring 
consult her in everything pertaining to good man- 
ners. ' In such a case she will not put you out 
of countenance, by telling you of it in company ; 
but either intimate it by some sign, or wait for 
an opportunity when you are alone together/ 
She will not only introduce him, says his lord- 
ship, but (* if one may use so low a word ') she 
will puff him, as she lives in the beau monde. 
Of this last, unhappily, her letters to Mr. Mor- 
ris of Nutshalling afford few traces. But she 
was evidently acquainted with many of the per- 
sonages who figure in Walpole's later letters 
from the French capital. Her chief friend was 
Mademoiselle de Charolais, a witty, verse- 
making princess of the blood, sister of that hom- 
icidal maniac who was wont to divert himself 
by firing upon the helpless Parisians from the 
roof of his palace.-^ With * Mademoiselle,' who 
was some years older than herself, she lived 
much ; and she also went frequently to the 

1 See Goldsmith's 'Citizen of the World/ Letter 
xxxviii. 



3i6 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

Prince de Conti's chdteau at L'Isle Adam on 
the Oise — a delightful country-seat of which, 
thirty years ago, nothing remained but a terrace 
walk shaded by ancient trees. Another intimate 
was that Duchesse d'Aiguillon whose singular 
fancy led her to translate and recite the * Eloisa 
to Abelard ' of Pope and the * Solomon ' of 
Prior.^ In the summer of 175 1 Lady Hervey 
was ill, and, like Walpole, testifies to the ex- 
treme kindness and solicitude of her French 
friends, who overpowered her with delicate at- 
tentions in the shape of light quilts, couches, 
easy-chairs, * little chickens, out of the coun- 
try,' and ' new-laid eggs, warm from the hen,' 
all of which things naturally heighten her ' re- 
luctance to quit this delightful place [Paris], and 
most agreeable people.' But the only approach 
to a portrait which she draws for her corre- 
spondent is the following pen-sketch of the now 
venerable Cydias of La Bruy^re — the author 
of the * Plurality des Mondes.' * I dine some- 
times ' (she says) with a set of beaux espritSy 
among which old Fontenelle presides. He has 
no mark of age but wrinkles, and a degree of 
deafness : but when, by sitting near him, you 

1 Madame de Boufflers was another Anglomaniac, who 
composed a prose tragedy upon a paper in the ' Spectator.* 
It was excellent, says Walpole ; but it remained unprinted. 



Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey, 317 

make him hear you, he never fails to understand 
you, and always answers with that liveliness, 
and a sort of prettiness, peculiar to himself. He 
often repeats and applies his own and other peo- 
ple's poetry very agreeably ; but only occa- 
sionally as it is proper and applicable to the 
subject. He has still a great deal of gallantry 
in his turn and in his discourse. He is ninety- 
two, and has the cheerfulness, liveliness, and 
even the taste and appetite of twenty-two.' He 
was two years older than Lady Hervey thought : 
but he had still six years to live before, in Janu- 
ary, 1757, he experienced that final difficult^ 
d'Hre to which his death-bed words referred. 
As far as one can judge from the dates of 
Lady Hervey's letters, it must have been during 
her absence in Paris at this period that she lost 
her father-in-law, who departed this world on 
January 20, 175 1, in his eighty-sixth year. His 
last communication to her is filled with paternal 
concern lest an indisposition of which she had 
spoken should have been promoted by the ill 
hours and good cookery of Paris ; and from the 
one that immediately preceded it, it seems that 
premonitions of her impending departure had for 
the time been distracting him from the misfor- 
tunes of his native land, since he refers to 
France as a * corrival country ' which * hath 



3i8 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

now provd to have had that superior ascendent 
long apprehended by, Madam, your Ladyships 
disconsolate, faithfull friend & servant, Bristol.' 
Some years previous to his death, and partly in 
anticipation of the severance from her Suffolk 
home which that event would involve, Lady 
Hervey had been re-building her London house 
in St. James's Place, her architect being Henry 
Flitcroft, the ' Burlington Harry' to whom we 
owe Hampstead Church and St. Giles-in-the- 
Fields. Her letters contain frequent references 
to the progress of this enterprise, and to the 
prolonged familiarity with compasses, rulers, 
Greystock bricks, cornices, fascias, copings, and 
so forth, which her minute supervision of the 
subject entailed. Besides making it comfort- 
able, her object was to render it as countrified 
as possible, so as to compensate her, as far as 
might be, for the loss of the bird-haunted lawns 
and leafy shrubberies of Ickv/orth; and as its 
five windows in a row looked uninterruptedly 
over the Green Park towards Chelsea (not far 
from the spot where in 173 1 her husband had 
fought his duel with Pulteney), her desire in 
this respect was doubtless gratified. The house, 
which stood between Spencer House and that 
of Sir John Cope (of Preston Pans), is still in 
existence, though at a later period it was divided 



Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey, 319 

into two. At St. James's Place Lady Hervey 
resided when she was in town, and here she 
entertained her particular friends with delightful 
little dinners, cooked and served d, la frangaisCy 
where the guests would be wits like Walpole or 
Chesterfield, and philosophers like Mr. Hume 
from Edinburgh (who sends her his account of 
his quarrel with Rousseau), or M. Helv^tius 
from Paris, ^ whose treatise ' De TEsprit' is, 
with Voltaire ^ ' Sur la Tolerance,' among the 
latest literary novelties which her Ladyship re- 
ports to Mr. Morris. Lord March, afterwards 
* Old Q,' who was also a favoured visitor at the 
Hdtel de Milady, as he calls it, writes enthusi- 
astically to Selwyn of these charming gatherings. 
Another of the habitues was Pulteney, both be- 
fore and after the period when, in Lord Ches- 
terfield's phrase, he * shrunk into insignificancy 

1 Hume warned Helvetius that in England men of 
letters were not made as much of as in France ; and 
Helvetius confirmed this upon his return to Paris (Hume 
to Blair, 6 April, 1765). But he no doubt made an 
exception in favour of his amiable hostess at St. James's 
Place. 

2 Lady Hervey had known Voltaire during his resi- 
dence in England in 1726-29, and he had even addressed 
to her some conventional amatory verses. In the ' His- 
toire de Jenni,' 1775, he makes mention of her, as also of 
Mead, Cheselden, and Peterborough. 



320 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

and an Earldom.' A passage or two from one 
of Lady Harvey's letters at the period of his 
death in July, 1764, serve to complete and con- 
firm Lord Chesterfield's by no means flattering 
portrait of their common friend, whose brilliant 
social gifts seem never to have blinded even his 
chosen associates to his essentially selfish and 
sordid character: * He was a most agreeable 
companion, and a very good-humoured man ; 
but I, that have known him above forty years, 
knew that he never thought of anyone when he 
did not see them, nor ever cared a great deal 
for those he did see. . . . He has left an 
immense fortune to a brother he never cared 
for, and always, with reason, despised, and a 
great deal to a man he once liked, but had 
lately great reason to think ill of. I am sorry 
he is dead ; he was very agreeable and enter- 
taining ; and whenever I was well enough to 
go downstairs, and give him a good dinner, he 
was always ready to come and give me his good 
company in return. I was satisfied with that ; 
one must take people as they are. . . .' 

Lord Bath died at eighty-two, and when this 
letter was written Lady Hervey was sixty-four. 
She returned to France several times after her 
first visit, and made excursions into Scotland 
and its ' frightfully dirty ' capital. But in later 



Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey. 321 

years, as hereditary gout grew upon her, her 
travels became restricted to such distances as 
would enable a postchaise to bring her home at 
the first approach of an attack. Her letters to 
Mr. Morris, whose firm friend and benefactor 
she continued to the last, extend to a little 
before her death ; but she doubtless wrote many 
others to her favourite daughter Lepel ; to her 
eldest son, the ambassador ; and to his brother, 
the Augustus Hervey who afterwards became 
an admiral, which, we suspect, must have been 
even better reading than many of those to her 
clerical correspondent. To Mr. Morris, of 
necessity, she shows only the more serious side 
of her character, although even her communica- 
tions to him are sufficient to reveal her as a 
woman of great intellectual capacity, of very 
superior ability, and of a happy and cheerful 
habit of mind. To those she loved she was 
uniformly affectionate and sympathetic, and it is 
not difficult to believe her assertion that she 
never lost a friend except by death. She her- 
self died in September, 1768. Walpole, who 
dedicated to her the first three volumes of his 
' Anecdotes of Painting,' and to whom she left 
a small remembrance in her will, thus writes 
her epitaph to Mann : * She is a great loss to 
several persons ; her house was one of the 

21 



322 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

most agreeable in London ; and her own friend- 
liness, good breeding, and amiable temper, had 
attached all that knew her. Her sufferings, 
with the gout and rheumatism, were terrible, 
and yet never could affect her patience, or 
divert her attention to her friends.' There was 
a miniature of her at Strawberry Hill ; but her 
best likeness in middle life is another portrait 
by Allan Ramsay (referred to at page i6o of this 
volume), which also belonged to Walpole, and 
which Lady Hervey probably gave him in return 
for his own portrait by the same artist. 



THE TOUR OF COVENT GARDEN. 

WHO would imagine that the Covent Garden 
of to-day, with its shady, many-scented 
arcade, — with its Babel of voices and crush of 
baskets, — its flowers ' a-growing and a-blow- 
ing/ — its curious mingling of town and country 
— who would now imagine that this had once 
been an * Enclosure or Pasture,' * browsed by 
deep-udder'd kine,' and where, maybe, the 
nightingale — 

* in April suddenly 
Brake from a coppice gemm'd with green and red * ? 

Yet SO it was. Covent Garden or ' Convent 
Garden,' lying between Long Acre and the 
Strand, originally formed part of the grounds of 
the ancient Abbey of Westminster. There is 
still extant a document, ' writ in choice Italian ' 
(if one may so style law Latin), describing it 
as * le Covent Garden . . . nuper pertinens 
Monasterio Sancti Petri Westmonasteriensis.' 
Under Edward the Sixth it was granted by that 
king to his uncle, Edward Seymour, Duke of 



324 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

Somerset, Jane Seymour's brother. At Somer- 
set's attainder it reverted to the Crown ; and 
then, says the meritorious Strype, ' with seven 
acres called Long Acre,' was re-granted by pat- 
ent to John, Earl of Bedford. This was in 
May, 1^52. Upon part of the 'terre et pas- 
ture ' so acquired, the earl built the old semi- 
wooden structure known as Bedford House, 
which looked into the Strand, and the long wall 
of whose spacious garden at the back corre- 
sponded to what is now the south side of 
the market. Under Francis the fourth Earl 
about 1 63 1, the square was laid out, and the 
arcades or piazzas erected.-^ Next came St. 
Paul's Church ; and Russell Street, Bow Street, 
Charles Street, Henrietta Street, and King 
Street followed in quick succession. For sev- 
eral years after this the square was little more 
than a gravelled space, and the market was con- 
fined to a ' small grotto ' or grove of trees which 
ran along the before-mentioned wall of Bedford 
House garden. In the centre of the square 
stood a tall dial, with four gnomons, and having 
a gilt ball at the top, a capital representation of 

1 All of the houses in these latter, according to the 
Rate Books, were inhabited by persons of rank. ' Covent- 
garden (says J. T. Smith) was the first square inhabited 
by the great ' ('Nollekens and his Times,' 1828, i. 221). 



The Tour of Covent Garden. 325 

which was to be seen at Burlington House, not 
very long ago, in a picture ascribed to Joseph 
NoUekens, father of the sculptor. In 1671, the 
market rising in importance, Charles II. granted 
it to William, fifth Earl of Bedford. Then, 
gradually, as Bedford House was pulled down, 
and Tavistock Row built, the market people be- 
gan to creep further into the body of the square ; 
and by the middle of the eighteenth century had 
begun to be largely supplemented by parasitic 
bakers, cooks, retailers of Geneva, and other 
personages — only Arcadian in one sense — who 
haunted the upper chambers of their sheds and 
booths, much to the 'injury and prejudice' of 
the neighbouring householders. The doubtful 
reputation thus acquired clung long to the local- 
ity, and seems to have increased with its pros- 
perity. But in 1830 the present Market House 
was built, and apart from the disappearance of 
the eastern piazzas, in the last sixty years the 
general appearance of the place has little 
altered, while its character has improved. If, 
as is not impossible, its present owner should 
some day sell it, many of its traditional associa- 
tions may be expected to disappear. Other 
buildings in the towering modern taste will re- 
place its 'brown old taverns,' and ^fringe of 
houses studded in every part with anecdote and 



326 Eighteenth Century yignettes, 

history,' and the Covent Garden so dear to 
Addison and Steele, to Smollett and Fielding, 
to Dickens and Thackeray, will have vanished 
as a tale that is told. It is proposed, therefore, 
while it retains something of its ancient aspect, 
to make a brief tour of this time-honoured 
precinct. 

The old Church of St. Paul's, the portico of 
which forms a convenient starting place, still 
looks much the same as it does in Hogarth's 
' Morning,' where the withered prototype of 
Bridget Allworthy, — 

* With bony and unkerchief'd neck defies 
The rude inclemency of wintry skies, 
And sails with lappet-head and mincing airs 
Duly at clink of bell to morning pray'rs.' 

As a matter of fact, however, it is not the same. 
The ' handsomest barn in England,' which Inigo 
Jones built about 163 1 for Francis Earl of Bed- 
ford, was burnt down in September, 179^, by 
the carelessness of some workmen who were 
repairing its red-tiled roof ; but it was re-erected 
on the old plan and proportions by Thomas 
Hardwick. Many persons of distinction lie 
within its walls or inclosure. Butler, the author 
of ' Hudibras,' 

(* Of all his gains by verse, he could not save 
Enough to purchase flannel and a grave 1 ' ) 



The Tour of Covent Garden. 327 

was buried here at the charges of an admirer, 
while Steele's friend, Diclc Estcourt, Kynas- 
ton, Charles Macklin, Gibber's partner, Robert 
Wilks, Lely, Grinling Gibbons, Strange the 
engraver, and ' Peter Pindar' (Dr. Wolcot) are 
all somewhere in the vicinity. And there are 
small as well as great. In the church or church- 
yard lie Charles the First's diminutive favour- 
ites, the dwarf Richard Gibson and his wife — 
that fortunate couple, whose epithalamium was 
written by Edmund Waller : — 

* Thrice happy is that humble pair, 
Beneath the level of all care ! 
Over whose heads those arrows fly 
Of sad distrust and jealousy : 
Secured in as high extreme, 
As if the world held none but them.' 

Both lived to threescore years and ten, and (say 
the chroniclers) ' had nine children of a proper 
size.' In front of St. Paul's the members for 
Westminster were elected, and here, at the 
close of the last century, and even well into the 
present, took place, on these occasions, those ' 
fierce and protracted riots of the anti-Reform 
Bill days which survive in the prints of Gillray 
and Rowlandson. One of these exhibitions of 
popular feeling — as may be remembered by the 
readers of an earlier series of these ^Vignettes' 



328 Eighteenth Century Fignettes. 

' — was witnessed in 1782 by Parson Charles 
Moritz of Berlin.^ 

Passing from St. Paul's to the left, we come 
to King Street. At the corner of this, old plans 
show the Swan Tavern, perhaps the very hos- 
telry which, in Hogarth's (reversed) print, is 
distinguished by a pot or jug upon a post. In 
King Street dwelt Edward Arne, the ' Political 
Upholsterer' of the 'Tatler,' father of Thomas 
Augustine Arne the musician, and Mrs. Gibber 
the tragic actress. At the elder Arne's house, 
the 'Two Crowns and Cushions,' lodged the 
Iroquois Indian Kings who came to England in 
1710 to assure themselves that the subjects of 
Her Majesty Queen Anne were not mere vas- 
sals of France, a fiction which had been care- 
fully instilled into their ' untutored minds ' by 
the Jesuits. Garrick and Rowe also lived in 
King Street, — Rowe, indeed, died in it. Just 
where King Street ends and Covent Garden 
begins, stands, at right angles to the fagade of 
St. Paul's, the National Sporting Club, once 
known to the amateurs of hot suppers and 
' Integer vitce ' as Evans's Hotel, or Evans's. 
The old house, one of the most prominent 
objects in the market, has a long and chequered 

1 See * A German in England ' in ' Eighteenth Century 
Vignettes,' 1892, pp. 222-3. 



The Tour of Covent Garden. 329 

history. Among the earlier residents were 
Denzill Holies, and Sir Kenelm Digby of the 
' Sympathetic Powder/ who, says Aubrey, had 
here his laboratory. A later tenant was the 
Lord Bishop of Durham, upon whose episcopal 
doorstep it seems to have been the pious but 
embarrassing custom to lay all the foundlings of 
the parish. Early in the century the house was 
rebuilt by Edward Russell, Earl of Orford, the 
famous admiral who beat the French off Cape 
La Hogue. To his seafaring repute it must be 
attributed that the fagade was long held to 
represent the stern of a vessel, to which indeed 
it bears a rudimentary resemblance. This, 
however, as the late Sir George Scharf pointed 
out, is simply a feature it has in common with 
many Dutch houses, some of which probably 
served for its model. Lord Russell died in 
1727, and the house passed to Lord Archer of 
Umberslade, who had married RusselFs grand- 
niece, Catherine Tipping. Towards the middle 
of the last century, Lady Archer's stately figure 
was well known in the market, and may be 
discovered in more than one contemporary pic- 
ture. To the Archers succeeded James West, 
M.P., President of the Royal Society, and a 
notable bibliographer, who here accumulated 
the library so vaunted by the Lisardos and 



330 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

Lysanders of Dibdin for its wealth of Caxtons, 
Pynsons, and Wynkyn de Wordes. Subse- 
quently, the house was opened by one David 
Lowe, formerly a hairdresser, as a ' family 
hotel,' the first of its kind in London, and an 
hotel it continued to be until its present trans- 
formation into a club. Next door to Lord 
Orford once lived William Hunter, John 
Hunter's elder brother, the ' great surgeon and 
anatomist of Covent-garden,' whom Fielding 
sent for on his last journey to Lisbon. Hunter's 
house was afterwards known as Richardson's 
Hotel, the proprietor of which, besides being 
celebrated for his excellent wine, was also, says 
the ' Gentleman's Magazine,' ' a diligent collec- 
tor of everything relative to the parish of St. 
Paul, Covent Garden.' But we are already in 
the Piazzas. 

The Piazzas formerly extended from Lord 
Oxford's house along the northern and eastern 
sides of the Market as far as Bedford house 
garden, — the northern side being known as the 
Great, the eastern as the Little Piazza. The 
Great Piazza still exists, and that portion of the 
Little Piazza which lay to the north of the 
present Russell Street existed until very recently.^ 

1 It was removed in 1889 in order to enlarge the 
market. 



The Tour of Covent Garden. 331 

The portion south of Russell Street, however, 
disappeared as far back as 1769, when it was 
burned down. ' Yesterday morning about five 
o'clock,' says the ' London Chronicle' for March, 
1821, 'afire broke out at Mr. Bradley's shop 
and distil-house, the corner of the Piazza in 
Great Russel-Street,^ Covent Garden, which in 
a short time, there being no water, consumed 
the following houses, viz., Mr. Bradley's large 
shop and distil-house, where it began ; the apart- 
ment of Mr. Vincent, musician, over it ; Mr. 
Bradley's dwelling house in Russell-street ; 
Mr. Hall's, cheesemonger, in the same street ; 
Mr. Lovejoy's Bagnio ; Mr. Rigg's Hummum ; 
Mr. Carrol's, Peruke Maker, another of the 
same business ; and great part of the Bedford 
Arms Tavern [this, it may be observed in paren- 
thesis, must have been the joyous hostelry from 
which Hogarth and his friends set out on their 
'Five Days' Peregrination'],^ all under the 
Piazza. The whole front of the said Piazza 
fell down about eight o'clock, with the most 
terrible concussion. The flames were so rapid, 

1 Russell Street was then divided into Great and Little 
Russell Streets — the former extending from Covent 
Garden to Brydges Street; the latter, from Brydges 
Street to Drury Lane. 

2 See ante, p. 135. 



332 Eighteenth Century J/ignettes. 

that several of the Inhabitants lost most of their 
effects. A party of Guards was sent from the 
Savoy to prevent the sufferers from being plun- 
dered.' The Piazza at this point v\^as never 
restored; but 'Mr. Rigg's Hummum' (Hum- 
mums) was rebuilt as an hotel. It was at the 
old Hummums that Johnson's relative, Parson 
Cornelius Ford, the ' fortem validumque combi- 
bonem, Lsetantem super amphora repleta/ of 
Vincent Bourne and the ' Midnight Modern 
Conversation,' ended his dissolute life ; and here 
his ghost is said to have appeared, appropriately 
haunting the cellar. Johnson himself told the 
story to Boswell. 'Sir/ said he, ^ it was believed. 
A waiter at the Hummums, in which house 
Ford died, had been absent for some time, and 
returned, not knowing that Ford was dead. 
Going down to the cellar, according to the story, 
he met him ; going down again he met him a 
second time. When he came up, he asked 
some of the people of the house what Ford 
could be doing there. They told him Ford vi'as 
dead. The waiter took a fever, in which he lay 
for some time. When he recovered, he said he 
had a message to deliver to some women from 
Ford ; but he was not to tell what, or to whom. 
He walked out ; he was followed ; but some- 
where about St. Paul's they lost him. He came 



The Tour of Covent Garden. 333 

back, and said he had delivered the message, 
and the women exclaimed, "Then we are all 
undone." Dr. Pellet, who was not a credulous 
man, inquired into the truth of this story, and he 
said the evidence was irresistible.' 

But the Hummums are in the eastern corner 
of Covent Garden, and we have not yet gone 
further than Richardson's Hotel. Between 
this and James Street, where once, in the brave 
days when the ' best red port' was five shillings 
a gallon, stood the famous ' Bumper Tavern ' 
advertised in the 'Spectator' (Nos. 260 and 
261), there seems to have been no resident of 
note, unless, indeed it be Lady Muskerry, the 
dancing ' Princess of Babylon ' who figures (not 
very worshipfully) in Grammont's 'Memoirs,' 
and, says Cunningham, lived ' in the north-west 
angle, corner of James Street.' In James Street 
itself once dwelt Sir Humphry Davy and Grignion 
the Engraver. If, however, the ' north-west 
angle of the Piazza' has but a few memories, 
the north-east angle is crowded with them. 
The second house eastward from James Street 
was Sir James Thornhill's, where, from 1724 to 
1734, he held his academy for drawing, and 
whence, in all probability, his handsome daugh- 
ter Jane ran off with William Hogarth.^ Some- 

^ According to George Vertue's notes in the British 
Museum, Hogarth himself lived in this house while the 



334 Eighteenth Century Fignettes. 

where hard by, at an earlier date, lived the wit 
Tom Killigrew, in a house afterwards occupied 
by Aubrey de Vere, the last Earl of Oxford. 
Near this again were the famous sale rooms of 
Cock, whom Fielding introduced into the ^His- 
torical Register' as 'Mr. Auctioneer Hen'; 
and here, between 174^ and 1750, the ' Ma- 
nage k la Mode' was exhibited gratis to an 
ungrateful world. In the front apartments of 
Cock's, and in convenient proximity to a fa- 
vourite house of call, the 'Constitution' in 
Bedford Street, lodged Richard Wilson. Zof- 
fany seems also to have resided in this house, 
afterwards Messrs. Langford's and later George 
Robins's ; and here he painted the picture of 
Foote as ' Major Sturgeon ' in ' The Mayor of 
Garratt' which Boydell's engraving has made 
familiar. Here, too, according to ' Rainy Day 
Smith,' the second Beef Steak Society held its 
meetings, when it migrated from its eyrie at the 
top of Covent Garden Theatre. Another house 
of which it is difficult to fix the precise position, 
must also have been in the immediate neigh- 
bourhood. This was the tavern which Mack- 
lin, the actor, opened in March, 17^, and 

plates of the 'Harlot's Progress* — the paintings of 
which had reconciled Sir James to the marriage — were 
being engraved. 



The Tour of Covent Garden. 335 

which, with the nondescript ' Grand Inquisi- 
tion ' in Hart Street ' on Eloquence and the 
Drama,' brought him in brief space to the brink 
of ruin. In the advertisements Macklin's ordi- 
nary is stated to have been in the grand Piazza, 
and the author of his life says it was ' next door 
to the playhouse '(i. e. the Piazza entrance to 
Covent Garden). While it continued, it must 
have been a good speculation for everyone but 
Macklin. The price was three shillings, which 
included port, claret, or whatever liquor the 
guest preferred. The proceedings were of the 
most impressive character. Ten minutes after 
the hour fixed — which was four o'clock — the 
doors were shut punctually. Then Macklin, in 
full dress, himself brought in the first dish, with 
a napkin slung across his left arm. Placing it 
on the table, ' he made a low bow, and retired 
a few paces back towards the side-board, which 
was laid out in very superb style. . . . Two of 
his principal waiters stood beside him, and one, 
two, or three more, as occasion required. . . . 
Thus was dinner entirely served up, and at- 
tended to, on the side of the house, all in dumb 
show. When dinner was over, and the bottles 
and glasses all laid upon the table, Macklin 
quitting his former situation, walked gravely up to 
the front of the table, and hoped " that all things 



33^ Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

were found agreeable ; " after which he passed 
the bell-rope round the back of the chair of the 
person who happened to sit at the head of the 
table, and making a low bow at the door, re- 
tired. . . . The company generally consisted 
of wits, authors, players, Templars, and loung- 
ing men of the town.' Excellent, however, as 
was the entertainment at this ^ temple of luxury,' 
as Fielding called it, it could not last. State 
ordinaries at four, lectures in Hart Street after- 
wards, and suppers into the small hours, were 
too much even for the energies of the eccentric 
projector. Moreover, he was robbed right and 
left by his servants; and in January, 1775, 
Charles Macklin, of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, 
figured in the ' London Gazette.' He paid 
twenty shillings in the pound ; but he was 
poorer by some thousands for his nine months' 
experience as ' Vintner, Coifeeman, and Chap- 
man.' 

In the angle of the Great and Little Piazza, 
with Rich's old theatre at its back, stood the 
Shakespeare Tavern, whose sign was painted 
by Clarkson, the artist of the picture of Henry 
Vn. in Merchant Taylors' Hall. Next door 
to the Shakespeare was the Bedford Coffee 
House (not to be confused with the already 
mentioned Bedford Arms), long used by Quin, 



The Tour of Covent Garden, 337 

Murphy, Garrick, Foote, and others. ' This 
coffee-house/ says the 'Connoisseur/ in 1754, 
* is every night crowded with men of parts. 
Almost everyone you meet is a polite scholar 
and a wit.' Later it was the home of the Beef 
Steak Society, whose laureate in the Sheridan 
era was Captain Charles Morris of the * Life 
Guards ' and the musical ' Toper's Apology/ 
a chanson d, boire that might have delighted the 
heart of Golias himself : — 

* Then, many a lad I liked is dead, 

And many a lass grown old ; 
And as the lesson strikes my head, 

My weary heart grows cold. 
But wine, a while, drives off despair. 

Nay, bids a hope remain — 
And that I think *s a reason fair 

To fill my glass again.' 

Rich's house came next the Bedford. It must 
have been in the Little Piazza, too, that lived 
Sir Godfrey Kneller, whose garden ran back as 
far as Dr. Radcliffe's house in Bow Street, and 
gave rise to an oft-told anecdote. ' As there 
was great intimacy between him (Kneller) and 
the physician' (says Walpole), he permitted the 
latter to have a door into his garden ; but Rad- 
cliffe's servants gathering and destroying the 
flowers, Kneller sent him word he must shut up 

22 



33 8 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

the door. RadclifFe replied peevishly, * Tell 
him he may do anything with it but paint it 1 ' 
* And I,' answered Sir Godfrey, ' can take any- 
thing from him but physic/ It was Rad- 
cliflfe whose conversational powers occasioned 
Prior's verses — *The Remedy worse than the 
Disease ' : — 

' I sent for Radcliffe ; was so ill, 
That other doctors gave me over ; 
He felt my pulse, prescrib'd his pill. 
And I was likely to recover. 

* But when the wit began to wheeze, 

And wine had warm'd the politician, 
Cur'd yesterday of my disease, 
I dy'd last night of my physician.* 

The author of ' Alma,' however, was not the 
man to spare his friend and spoil his epigram ; 
and it is probable that he was as unjust as he 
was obviously ungrateful to Radcliffe, who has 
the reputation of being a brilliant rather than a 
tedious talker. 

Russell Street, which turns out of the end of 
Covent Garden now extends as far as Drury 
Lane, passing Drury Lane Theatre. It would 
carry us beyond the limits of this paper to give 
any detailed account of its many illustrious resi- 
dents. But, in the short portion of it which 



The Tour of Covent Garden. 339 

lies between Covent Garden and Bow Street 
were no less than three of those famous old 
coffee-houses of the Augustan and Georgian 
eras, the names of which can never be disasso- 
ciated from the market. At No. 17, on the 
left, two doors from the vanished Piazza, was 
Tom's (not to be confounded with Tom's in the 
Strand or Tom's in Cornhill). 'Here,' says 
Defoe in 1722, 'you will see blue and green 
ribbons and Stars sitting familiarly, and talking 
with the same freedom as if they had left their 
quality and degrees of distance at home.' Tom's 
survived until 181 4. In the latter part of the 
eighteenth century it was frequented by John- 
son, Goldsmith, Sir Philip Francis, and a host 
of notabilities, literary and otherwise. From, a 
water-colour by Shepherd in the British Museum, 
dated 1857, it was then a tea and colonial ware- 
house, occupied by one Allen. Nearly opposite 
Tom's was Button's, established in 171 3. Daniel 
Button, the first proprietor, was an old servant 
of Addison, who, with his 'little senate,' — 
Carey, Philips, Budgell, Tickell, and the rest, 
— patronized the house. It was at Button's 
that Philips hung up the legendary rod that was 
to chastize Pope for his perfidies in the ' Guar- 
dian,' and it was here, too, that as a post-office 
to the same paper, was erected the lion's head 



349 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

letter-box upon the Venetian pattern which is 
still preserved at Woburn Abbey. When But- 
ton's was taken down, this grotesque relic was 
transferred to the Shakespeare Head Tavern ; 
thence it passed to the Bedford Coffee-house, 
where it was used for the * Inspector' of Field- 
ing's rival. Dr. Hill. Finally it came into the 
hands of Mr. Charles Richardson above men- 
tioned, whose son sold it to its present possessor, 
the Duke of Bedford. Higher up Russell Street, 
on the same side as Tom's, and at the north cor- 
ner of Bow Street, was * Will's,' an older house 
than either of the other two. ' Will's,' so called 
from its first proprietor, William Urwin, dated 
from the Restoration, and is mentioned by Pepys. 
Its centre of attraction was Dryden, who visited 
it regularly until his death. In winter his seat 
was by the fire ; in summer his chair was moved 
to the balcony. Cibber could recall him there 
* a decent old man, arbiter of critical disputes ; ' 
and it is supposed that when Pope saw him 
in his last years it must have been at * Will's.' 
I Virgilium vidi tantum,'' Pope said to Wycherley, 
but he nevertheless remembered that the au- 
thor of the ' Fables' was 'plump, of a fresh 
colour, with a down look and not very con- 
versable.' He was, however, not unwilling 
to talk about himself, if we may trust an 



The Tour of Covent Garden, 341 

anecdote in Spence. * The second time that 
ever I was there' [i.e. at 'Will's'], says 
Dean Lockier, ' Mr. Dryden was speaking of 
his own things, as he frequently did, especially 
of such as had been lately published. '' If any- 
thing of mine is good," says he, " 't is Mac- 
Fleckno ; and I value myself the more upon it, 
because it is the first piece of ridicule written in 
Heroics." On hearing this I plucked up my 
spirit so far as to say, in a voice but just, loud 
enough to be heard, that " Mac-Fleckno was a 
very fine poem; but that I had not imagined it 
to be the first that was ever writ that way." 
On this Dryden turned short upon me, as sur^ 
prised at my interposing ; asked me how long I 
had been a dealer in poetry ; and added with a 
smile, *' Pray, Sir, what is that you did ima- 
gine to have been writ so before?" I named 
Boileau's " Lutrin," and Tassoni's " Secchia 
Rapita," which I had read, and knew Dryden 
had borrowed some strokes from each. ** 'T is 
true," said Dryden, "I had forgot them." A 
little after Dryden went out ; and in going, 
spoke to me again, and desired me to come and 
see him the next day. I was highly delighted 
with the invitation ; went to see him accord*- 
ingly : and was well acquainted with him after, 
as long as he lived.' 



342 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 

At No. 20, Russell Street, once lodged 
Charles Lamb, commanding from his windows, 
to his intense satisfaction, both Covent Garden 
and Drury Lane Theatres, while Davies, the 
bookseller and quondam actor, whose ' very 
pretty wife ' survives in a Couplet of Churchill, 
had his shop on the south side, No. 8, opposite 
* Tom's.' It was in Davies' back parlor that 
Boswell was first introduced to Johnson, and it 
was here, also, that the * great Cham of Litera- 
ture ' might have been heard inquiring the price 
of a thick stick (such as we learn from old 
sketches were sold in the neighboring Piazza) in 
order to protect himself against the insolence of 
Foote. Here, too, came the arrogant War- 
burton (in a coach 'sprinkled with mitres'), 
and Goldsmith and Reynolds, and Beauclerc 
and Bennet Langton. But we must turn once 
more into Covent Garden. 

The 'Hummums' has already been described ; 
and about that portion of the south-eastern side 
once occupied by the extension of the Piazza 
burned down in 1769 there is little to say. At 
the extreme end of it, where Tavistock Row 
began, stood that highly popular puppet-show of 
the younger Powell, to which — ^.witness the 
undersexton's letter in No. 14 of the ' Spectator ' 
— the public used to flock whenever the bell of 



The Tour of Covent Garden, 343 

St. Paul's tolled for morning and evening 
prayers. ' I have placed my Son at the Piawas^' 
writes the worthy man, * to acquaint the Ladies 
that the Bell rings for Church, and that it stands 
on the other side of the Garden; but they only 
laugh at the Child.' Powell's show went by 
the name of ' Punch's Theatre,' and seems to 
have included set pieces such as * Whittington 
and his Cat' and the * History of Susanna; 
or, Innocence betrayed' (with a ' Pair of new 
Elders'). At the same house was exhibited 
another popular show — Mr. Penkethman's 
* Pantheon : or, the Temple of the Heathen 
Gods,' where, as per advertisement, * the 
Figures, which are above 100, move their 
Heads, Legs, Arms, and Fingers so exactly 
to what they perform, and setting one Foot 
before another, like living Creatures, that it 
justly deserves to be esteem'd the greatest 
Wonder of the Age.' 

Tavistock Row, mentioned above, ran half- 
way along the southern side of the market, 
where of yore went the old garden wall of 
Bedford House. At No. 4 lived Lord Sand- 
wich's mistress, the unfortunate Miss Martha 
Reay, whom, under the influence of ungovern- 
able jealousy the Rev. James Hackman shot in 
the Piazza as he was quitting Covent Garden 



344 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 

Theatre.^ In the same house died Macklin. 
But Tavistock Row seems to have been most 
patronized by artists. Vandervelde the younger, 
the miniaturist and enameller Zincke, Nathaniel 
Dance, and Thomas Major the engraver, all 
had abodes in this little range of houses. 

In front of Tavistock Row^, according to J. 
T. Smith, stood a shed or building, which, ap- 
parently by artistic license, Hogarth, in his 
print of * Morning,' has placed under the por- 
tico t)f St. Paul's. This was the coffee-house, 
♦ well-known,' says Arthur Murphy, ' to all gen- 
tlemen to whom beds are unknown/ which went 
by the name of * King's * or ' Tom King's.' 
Fielding refers to it more than once (in * Pas- 
quin ' his * comic poet ' is arrested as he is leav- 
ing this (Questionable resort) ; and it frequently 
occurs in eighteenth-century literature. King, 
its first proprietor, had been an Eton boy, but 
he is not enrolled among Sir Edward Creasy's 
' Eminent Etonians.' At his death his dutiful 
widow continued the business, ultimately retir- 
ing, after an ill-spent life, to Haverstock Hill, 

1 This tragically terminated story, told originally in Sir 
Herbert Croft's * Love and Madness,' 1780, has recently 
been cleverly rearranged by Mr. Gilbert Burgess in an 
attractive voltthie entitled ' The Love Letters of Mr. H. 
and Miss R., 177 5-1 7 79' (Heinemann, 1895). 



The Tour of Govent Garden, 345 

where, facing Steele's cottage, she built three 
substantial houses, long known as' Moll King's 
Row.' Mr. Edward Draper, of Vincent Square, 
Westminster, has a picture of her, attributed to 
Hogarth, in which she is represented as a bold, 
gypsy-looking woman, with a cat in her lap. 
Southampton Street, with its recollections of 
Garrick and Nance Oldfield, and Henrietta 
Street, sacred to Kitty Clive, need not long 
detain us. In Henrietta Street lived Nathaniel 
Hone the painter, extracts from whose interestr 
ing diary for 17^2-3 were published some years 
since in the * Antiquary,' and the engravers 
Strange and McArdell ; while it was in the 
Castle Tavern that Richard Brinsley Sheri- 
dan fought the memorable duel with Captain 
Mathews (afterwards so discreditably repeated 
at Bath) for his beautiful 'St. Cecilia,' Miss 
Linley. A few steps bring us once more to the 
portico of St. Paul's, and the Tour of Covent 
Garden is at an end. 



GENERAL INDEX. 



GENERAL INDEX 



N. B. — The titles of articles are in capitals. 



Abington, Mrs., 4, 6, 7, 15. 
Absolute, Sir Anthony, Z^i^ 

84. 
Adam, The Brothers, 2. 
Addison, Joseph, 47, 66, 

176, 188. 
Adventures of a Guinea^ 

Johnstone's, 89. 
Adventures of Five 

Days, The, 133-146. 
^sop, Barlow's, 48. 
Aiguillon, Duchess d', 316. 
Aitken, Mr. George A., 228. 
Alchemist^ Jonson's, 10. 
Alcidalis and Zelida, Voi- 

ture's, 218. 
Alma, Prior's, 240, 254. 
Amelia, Justice's, 90. 
Anatomy, Burton's, 165. 
Ancient Mariner^ Cole- 
ridge's, 45. 
Anecdotes of Painting, Wal- 

pole's, 213, 321. 
Anne, Lady, 21. 



Anson, Lord, 183. 201. 
Apprentice, Murphy's, 86. 
Aram, Eugene, 129. 
Arbuthnot, Dr., 30, 303. 
Archer, 14, 20, 27. 
Archer, Lady, 329. 
Arne, Edward, 328. 
Askew, Dr., 49, 50. 
Atalantis, The New, 88. 
Atterbury, Bishop, 123. 
Audley End, Winstanley's 

39- 
Authors, Royal and Noble ^ 
Walpole's, 209. 



Bacon, 280. 

Bacon, Roger, Jebb's, 41. 
Baillie, Dr., 48. 
Baker, George, 220. 
Baker, Samuel, 168. 
Bannister, 22, 26. 
Barbadoes, Ligon's, 45. 
Barbauld, Mrs., 25. 



350 



General Index, 



Bartolozzi, F., 71. 
Bath, Lord, 192, 320. 
Bathoe, William, 207. 
Beauclerk, Lady Di., d>6. 
Beaux Stratagem, Farqu- 

har's, 15. 
Beckford, Lord Mayor, 71, 

Bedford Arms, 135, 145. 
Bedford Coffee House, 336, 

337- 
Bedford, Duke of, 56. 
Bedford House, 324. 
Bedlam, 77. 
Beef Steak Society, The, 

334,337. 
Belle, Simon-Alexis, 223, 

244. 
Bellenden, Mary, 224, 294, 

297, 299. 
Belloy, M. Buyrette de, 58. 
Benedick, 15, 20. 
Bennett, Charles H., 47. 
Ben-money, 112. 
Bentley, Richard, the 

younger, 178, 208, 211. 
Betsy Thoughtless, Hay- 
wood's, 88, 92, 96, 97- 

100 
Bewick, Thomas, 291. 
Binning, Lord, 147. 
Birds, Bewick's, 48. 
Bishop Bonner's Ghost, 

More's, 219. 



Blackmore, Sir Richard, 

30- 
Boase, Mr. G. C, 273. 
Boccalini, Trajan, 44, 282. 
Boileau, 225. 
Boissy, M. Louis de, 51. 
Bolingbroke, 172, 240. 
Bon Ton, Garrick's, 20. 
Boscawen, Mrs., 147. 
Boswell, 147, 150. 
Boufflers, Madame de, 316. 
Bourne, Charles, 118. 
Boyle, Hamilton, 192. 
Bradford, Mrs., III. 
Bragg, Thomas, 290. 
Branstons, The, 289. 
Branville, Sir Anthony, 7. 
Bristol, John, Earl of, 294, 

298, 299, 300, 305, 306, 

308, 309, 310, 317, 318. 
Bristol, Lady, 304-306. 
Brooke, Miss Mary, 295. 
Brothers, The, 249. 
Browne, Isaac Hawkins, 

181. 
Browning, Robert, 133. 
Brute, Sir John, 13, 14, 27. 
Bryant, Jacob, 180. 
Brydges Street, 2, 331. 
Bunbury, Lady Sarah, 69. 
Burnet, Judge, 173. 
Burney, Dr., 26. 
Burney, Fanny, 8, 14, 183, 

184, 200. 



General Index, 



351 



Bute, Lord, 56, 155. 
Butler, Samuel, 326. 
Button's Coffee House, 

339. 340. 
Bylield, Mary, 290. 
Byron, Lord, 56, 71, 72, 



Caine, Mr. Hall, 118. 

Calprenede, 84. 

' Cambridge, the Every- 
thing,' 150, 178-204. 

Caney the Gold Headed, 
Munk's, 48. 

Canning, Elizabeth, 149, 
312. 

Cap of Grey Hairs for a 
Green Head, Trench- 
field's, 277. 

Cassandra, Cotterell's, 117. 

Castle of Otranto, Wal- 
pole's, 215. 

Castle Tavern, 345. 

Charolais, Mdlle. de, 315. 

Chatterton, Letter on, Wal- 
pole's, 217. 

Chaworth, Mr., 56, 71. 

Cherry, 15. 

Chesterfield, Lord, 62, 67, 
1"^^ 191. 194. 202, 314, 

319- 
Cheyne, Dr., 30, 79. 
Chinese Letters, Goldsmith's, 

lOI. 



Chudleigh, Miss Elizabeth, 

57, 307- 

Churchill, Charles, 59, 158, 
179. 

Chute, John, 207. 

Cibber, Mrs., 67, 328. 

Ciccio, Abate, 154. 

Cicero, Olivet's, 39. 

Clandestine Marriage, Gar- 
rick and Colman's, 28. 

Clarinda and Chloe, Steele's, 
46. 

Clenardus, Nicolaus, 46, 

47- 

Clifton, Francis, 121, 122, 
124. 

Clive, Lord, 198. 

Clive, Mrs., 6, 178. 

Closterman, J. B., 277. 

* Club,' Puckle's, 269-291. 

Coches d'eau, 152, 1 53. 

Cock, the Auctioneer, 334. 

Colin Clout, Spenser's, 43. 

Colman, George, 5, 83, 86, 
91, 194. 

Condamine, M. de la, 63, 80. 

Conti, Prince de, 316. 

Conversation, Prior's, 225, 
247, 253, 255. 

Cook, Captain, 198. 

Cordelia, 22, 24. 

Cornilie, Henault's, 215. 

Coromandel, War in, Cam- 
bridge's 197. 



352 



General Index, 



Country-Mouse and City- 
Mousey Prior's, 231, 232, 

GovENT Garden, The 
Tour of,. 323-345. 

Coventry, Francis, 89, 192. 

Cowper, 226, 227. 

Coysevox, Antoine, 244. 

Croker, J. W., 295, 307. 

Crown Inn, Rochester, 139. 

Crudities, Coryat's, 43. 

Cuckold's Point, Gibbets at, 
136. 

Cumberland, Richard, 22, 
212. 

Cunningham, Dr. Alexan- 
der, 151. 

Cunningham, Allan, 155, 
158. 

Cuzship, 112, 113. 



Dacier, M., 54. 
Dance, Nathaniel, 28, 344. 
Daniel, George, 210. 
D'Arblay, Madame. See 

Burney. 
Dark House, Billingsgate, 

136. 
Davies, Thomas, 342. 
Davy, Sir Humphry, 333. 
Defoe, Daniel, 89. 
Denis, Charles, 59, 261. 
Denmark, yio\es,vioxXh^Sy 46. 
Dentrecolles, Pere, 103. 



D'£on de Beaumont, M., 

58, 66. 
Derrick, Samuel, 76. 
Descazeaux, M. du Halley, 

79. 
Dibben, Thomas, 229. 
Dice, Varieties of False, 285. 
Dick, Sir Alexander, 152, 

160. 
Dickens, Charles, 33. 
Discovery, Mrs. Sheridan's, 7. 
Dispensatory, Quincy's, 47. 
Dobell, Mr. Bertram, 271. 
Doctor, SoUthey's, 105. 
Dorinda, Fitzpatrick's, 201, 

218. 
Dorset, Lord, 229, 234, 235. 
Douglas, Home's, 313. 
Down Hall, Prior's, 241- 

243. 253. 
Drake, Nathan, 104. 
Dr. Mead's Library, 29- 

50- 
Draper, Daniel, 130. 
Draper, Mr. Edward, 345." 
Draper, Mrs. (Sterne's 

Eliza), 130. 
Drugger, Abel, 10, 11, 12, 

13, 14, 19, 27. 
Dryden, John, 232,340,341. 
Dubourdieu, Jean Armand, 

115- 
Duenna, Sheridan's, 2, 3, 5. 

Dyer the actor, 67. 



General Index. 



Edward VI., Letters of, 216. Ferguson of Pitfour, James, 
Edwards, Thomas, 181. 
Edwards the Ornithologist, 

49. 
Eikon Bast like, 43. 
Eliot, George, 165. 
Elwin, Rev. Whitwell, 166. 
English Padlock^ Prior's, 

261, 262. 
Engravers, Catalogue of, 

Walpole's, 213. 
Epigrams, Prior's, 262, 263. 
Estcourt, Richard, 327. 
Estimate, Brown's, 53, 313. 
Etat des Arts, Rouquet's, 

29. 
Evan's Hotel, 328. 
Every Man in his Humour, 
.. Jonson's, 12. 
Exeter, Lord, 234. 
♦ Exit Roscius,' 1-28. 
Ezio, Metastasio's, 68. 



Ea^/e of yotham, Cam- 
bridge's, 195. 

Fables, Croxall's, 48. 

Faerie Queene, Spenser's, 43; 

Fancourt, Rev. Samuel,, 
206. 

Farington, Joseph, 19, 20. 

Felix, Don, 24, 

Female Quixote, Lenox's, 
84. 



74. 

Fielding, Henry, 75, 84, 
100, 1 01, 149. 

Fielding's Library, 163- 
177. 

Fielding, Sir John, 172. 

Fitzpatrick, General JR.i<:h- 
ard, 201, 218. ! ^!.'^M:■t;.> 

Five Days, The Adven- 
tures OF, 133-146. 

Five Days' Peregrination, 
The, 134. 

Fleet, Liberties ot v ^the, 

Flitcroft, Henry, 318. 
Fontenelle, M. de, 316. 
Foote, Samuel, 57, 65, 66, 

334, 337- . - 
Ford, Cornelius, 332. 
Forrest, Ebenezer, 134, 146. 
Forrest, Theodosius, 134. 
Fran^ais h l^ondres, Boissy's, 

51, 52- 
Francklin, Richard, 207. 
Freind, Dr., 30, 244. 
Fugitive Pieces, Walpole's, 

210. 

Gainsborough, 70. 
Gamesters, Puckle, on, 283. 
Garrick, David, 1-28, 57, 

58, 69, 78, 80, 86, 172, 

328. 



23 



354 



General Index. 



Garrick, Mrs., 26, 27. 

Garth, Samuel, 30. 

Gay, John, 47, 297, 298. 

Gent, Alice, 132. 

Gent, Thos., Printer, 90, 

104-132. 
George, Dr. William, 180. 
Gevaudan, The Beast of 

the, 57. 
Gibbons, Grinling, 160, 327. 
Gibbs, James, 243. 
Gibson, Richard, the Dwarf, 

327. 
Girardon, Fran9ois, 152. 
Goldsmith, Oliver, 76, loi, 

179- 

Gostling, Rev. W., 146. 

Grammo7ifs Memoirs, 215. 

Granby, Marquis of, 70. 

Gray, Thomas, 180, 198, 
205. 

Great Eastern Window, 
Gent's, 130. 

Great Ormond Street Hos- 
pital, 32, 33. 

Green, Matthew, 142. 

Green, Valentine, 104. 

Grenville, George, 73. 

Gresham Professors, Ward's, 
41. 

Grey Cap for a Green Head, 
Puckle's, 269, 277. 

Grignion, Charles, 333. 

Grolier, 35. 



Grosley's 'Londres,* 51- 

82. 
Grosley, M. Pierre Jean, 

53-56. 
Guerchy, Count de, 58, 66. 
Guicciardini, Francesco, 44. 
Guy, Alice, 114, 118, 120, 

I2i, 125. 



Hackman, Rev. James, 343. 
Hailstone, Edward, 105. 
Halde, Du, 102, 103. 
Hamlet, Garrick's, 16, 17, 

18, 19, 20. 
Hampton House, 69, 78. 
Harding, Silvester, 220. 
Hare, James, 201. 
Harrington, Lady, 79. 
Harvey, William, 289. 
Hatchett, Mr., loi. 
Hawkins, Sir John, 36. 
Hayman's Vauxhall pic- 
tures, 64. 
Haywood, Eliza, 96. 
Helvetius, M., 319. 
Henrietta Street, 345. 
Henry and Emma, Prior's, 

i 256. 
Herbert of Cherbury, Wal- 

! pole's, 214. 
Hervey,^^ Augustus, 307, 

32I; 
Hervey, Carr Lord, 303. 



General Index. 



355 



Hervey, John Lord, 298, 

299» 30i» 302. 

Hervey, Mary Lepel, 
Lady, 160, 292-322. 

Hervey, Rev. S. H. A., 295. 

Hickey, Mr., 178, 179. 

Hieroglyphic Tales, Wal- 
pole's, 217, 218. 

Hill, Robert, 211. 

Hind and Panther, Dry- 
den's, 231. 

Histoire de Jenni, Voltaire's, 

319- 
Historic Doubts, Walpole's, 

215. 

Historia Naturalis, Pliny's, 

39- 

Historia sui Temporis, De 

Thou's, 41. 

History of the World, Ra- 
leigh's, 43, 227. 

Hodgkin, Mr. J. Eliot, 79, 
272. 

Hogarth, William, 10, 47, 
50, 69, 71, 89, 134, 156, 

171, 333- 
Hommes Illustres,Vexx2iv\t^s, 

43- 
Hone, Nathaniel, 345. 
' Honeycombe, Polly, * 

83-103. 
Honywood, General, 70. 
Howard, Mrs., 296, 299, 

300. 



Hudibras, Grey's, 37. 

Hudson, 178. 

Hull, History of, Gent's, 

128. 
Hume, David, 158, 159, 160. 

319- 
Hunter, Rev. Joseph, 105. 
Hunter, William, 330. 



Imperiali, Francesco, 1 54. 
Indian Kings, The, 328. 
Influenza, The, i. 
Inkle and Yarico, Steele's, 

46. 
Intruder, Cambridge's, 196. 
Island, Byron's, 183. 



James Street, Covent Gar- 
den, 333. 

yardins Modernes, Essai 
surl'Art des, Walpole's, 
217. 

yemmy and yenny yessamy, 
Haywood's, 97. 

Jenyns, Soame, 192. 

yoe Thompson, Kimber's, 
92. 

Johnson, John, 290. 

Johnson, Samuel, 15, 36, 
46, 148, 161, 200, 342. 

yournal of a Voyage to Lis- 
bon, Fielding's, 167, 172. 



356 



General Index. 



Journey into England, 

Hentzner's, 208, 209. 
Jusserand, M., 52. 



Killigrew, Tom, 334. 

Kimber, Edward, 92. 

King, Moll, 345. 

King's Coffee House, 344. 

Kingston, Duchess of, i. 

Kingston-upon-Hull, History 
of, Gent's, 128. 

King Street, Covent Gar- 
den, 328. 

King, Thomas, 9. 

Kirgate, Thomas, 215, 220. 

Kitely, 12, 13, 17, 24, 27. 

Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 337. 

Kohlmetz, Mr. George W., 
277. 



Lacy, Willoughby, 4. 
Lamb, Charles, 342. 
Langfords, the Auctioneers, 

334- 
Langton, Bennet, 46. 
Languish, Miss Lydia, 83. 
Layer, Christopher, 126. 
Lear, 24. 

Le Blanc, Abbe, 52. 
Le Brun, Charles, 65, 238. 
Lenox, Charlotte, 2,88, loi. 
Leon, 15. 



Lepel, Nicholas Wedig, 
296, 297. 

Lesage, Alain Rene, 59. 

Lethe, Garrick's, 179. 

Lettres Fhilosophiques, Vol- 
taire's, 52. 

Lever, Sir Ashton, 183. 

Leveridge, Richard, 135. 

Library, Fielding's, 163- 
177. 

Lichtenberg, G. C, 11, 17, 
28. 

Lifford, Viscount, 160. 

Lion's Head Letter-Eox, 
340. 

Lloyd, Robert, 59. 

Locker Lampson, F., 241. 

Lockier, Dean, 341. 

* LONDRES, GROSLEY's,' 51- 

82. 

Loutherbourg, Philip de, 9. 
Love Letters of Mr. H. 
and Miss R., Burgess's, 

344- 
Lowe's Hotel, 330. 
Lumpkin, Tony, 47. 
Lusignan, 7, 8, 27. 
Lyttelton, Lord, 73, 191. 
Lytton, Robert Lord, 11. 



Macaulay, Lord, 83. 
Macbeth, 16. 
Macdonald, Sir James, 62. 



General Index. 



357 



Macklin, Charles, 327, 336. 

Macmichael, Dr., 48. 

Magliabecchi, 210. 

Magpie and her Brood, Wal- 
pole's, 218. 

Major, Thomas, 344. 

Mallet, David, 173. 

Manager in Distress, Col- 
man's, 199. 

Man of Quality, 15. 

Mansfield, Lord, 158. 

March, Lord, 320. 

Marriage Act, Shebbeare's, 
89. 

Mary Lepel, Lady Her- 

VEY, 292-322. 

Matthew Prior, 222-268. 
Matthews, John, 123. 
Maurier, Mr. George du, 

223. 
Maydieu, Abbe, 81. 
McArdell, James, 345. 
Mead, Richard, 29-50, 154. 
Medicinal Dictionary, Dr. 

Robert James's, 41. 
Memoirs, Wordsworth's, 44. 
Micro-cosmographie, Earle's, 

280, 281. 
Middleton, Dr. Conyers, 

311- 
Midwinter, Edward, 109, 

113, 124. 
Minster (Sheppey), 144. 
Milton, Lauder on, 48. 



Miscellaneous Antiquities^ 
Walpole's 216. 

Missal, Mead's Raphael, 34, 
38. 

Moliere, 30. 

Montagu, Charles, Earl of 
Halifax, 231, 235. 

Montagu, Sir James, 230. 

Montagu, Lady Mary Wort- 
ley, 89, 302. 

Moore, Edward, 191, 194. 

More, Hannah, 10, 13, 17, 
19, 25. 

Morris, Captain Charles, 

337. 

Morris, Rev. Edmund, 307, 
308, 310, 315, 319. 

Moritz, Pastor, 60, 328. 

Muck Ado about Nothings 
Shakespeare's,^ 15. 

Munk, Dr., 48. 

Muralt, M., 52. 

Murphy, Arthur, 164, 337. 

Muse Recalled, Jones's, 219. 

Muskerry, Lady, 333. 

Mysterious Mother, Wal- 
pole's, 86, 215. 



Nairne, Lord, 119. 
National Sporting Club, 

328. 
Necker, Madame, 23, 25. 
Nesbit, Charlton, 289. 



358 



General Index. 



Newbery, John, 9, 38. 

Newcastle, Duke of, 73. 

Newton, 49. 

Nivernais, Duke of, 57, 61, 
79, 157, 158. 

Northcote, James, 162. 

Ncrvelisfs Magazine, Har- 
rison's, 91. 

Nugent, Dr. Thomas, 8i. 



Odes^ Gray's, 208. 

Officina Arbuteana, 
The, 205-221. 

O'Keeffe, John, 22. 

Old City Manners, Lenox's, 
2. 

Oracle, Saint-Foix*s, 67. 

Orme, Robert, 198. 

Our Mutual Friend, Dick- 
ens's, 33, 64. 

Overbury, Sir Thomas, 280, 
283. 

Oyseaux, Belon's, 48. 



Painting, Ancient, Turnbull 

on, 47. 
Pamela, Richardson's, 102. 
Pantaleon, St., 55. 
Parallel, Spence's, 210. 
Peiresc, N. C. F. de, 35. 
Pelham, Henry, 172. 



Penkethman's Pantheon, 

343- 
Pensees, Pascal's, 43. - f 

Peregrination, The Five 

Days', 134. 
Peterborough, Lord, 303. i 
Petrarch, The Aldine, 39. 
Pharsalia, Lucan's, 2H. 
Phipps, Mrs., 307, 321. 
Physiognomonia, Porta's, 47. 
Piazzas, Covent Garden, 

324, 330, 331, 332, 342, 

343- 
Pindar, Peter, 1 58. 
Pitcairn, Dr., 48. 
Pitt, William, 71. 
Poe, Edgar Allan, 269. 
Poems, Countess Temple's, 

214. 
Poems on Several Occasions, 

Prior's, 222, 223, 251, 

2S3> 254. 

Poems, Hoyland's, 215. 

Pollard, Mr. A. W., 284. 

' Polly Honeycomb e,' 
83-103. 

Pomfret, Lord, ^'^. 

Pompey the Little, Coven- 
try's, 89. 

Pont de Veyle, M., 217. 

Pope, Alexander, 96, 190, 
296, 297, 298. 

Pope Loan Museum (1888), 
222. 



General Index. 



359 



Pope, Miss, ^6. 
Poider, Richarde, 285. 
Portland, Duchess of, 250, 

251, 267. 
Powell's Puppet Show, 342. 
Prior, Matthew, 170, 

222-268, 293, 338. 
Pritchard, Mrs., 178. 
Proctors, 138. 
Provoked W^, Vanbrugh's, 

13. 70- 
Puckle's * Club,* 269- 

291. 
Puckle's Machine, 272. 
Puddle Dock, 136, 193. 
Pursuits of Literature, Mat- 

hias's, 189. 



Queenborough, 142. 
Quin, James, 13, 278, 338. 



Radcliife, Dr. John, 31, 32, 

48, 337> 338. 
Ragguagli di Parnasso, Boc- 

calini's, 282. 
Ramsay, Allan (Painter), 

49, 70, 149-162, 322, 
Ramsay, Allan (Poet), 150. 
Ramsay, Mrs., 159. 
Ranger, 12, 20. 
Ranelagh, 63. 

Reay, Miss Martha, 343. 



Reinagle, Philip, 155, 160. 
Reynolds, A Rival of, 

147-162. 
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 22, 

69, 147, 150. 
Rhenish Wine House, 228, 

231. 
Rhopalic Verse, 188. 
Rich, Christopher, 336, 337. 
Richard the Third, 10, 16, 

20, 21, 28, (£. 
Richardson, Charles, 330, 

340. 
Richardson, Samuel, 126, 

163, 174. 
Richardson's Hotel, 330. 
Ripporiy History of, Gent's, 

104, 129. 
Rival of Reynolds, A, 

147-162. 
Rivals, Sheridan's, 83. 
Robertson, Dr., 160. 
Robin Hood Club, 75, 76. 
Robinson CV«j<7<? (abridged), 

125. 
Robinson, William, 207, 

208, 211. 
Rogers, Samuel, 22. 
Roubillac, 49, 50, 70, 79, 

Rouquet, Jean, 29, 156. 
Rousseau, 57, 158, 159, 313, 

319- 
Royal Society^ Hills, 48. 



36o 



General Index. 



Kubrick, Jack, 9. 

Rudd, Mrs. Margaret Caro- 
line, I. 

Rule a Wife and Have a 
Wife, Beaumont and 
Fletcher's, 14. 

Russell, Earl of Oxford, 

329- 
Russell Street, 331, 338, 

340, 342. 
Russia^ Whitworth's, 191, 
210. 



Sacheverell, Rev. Henry, 

no. 
St. Paul's, Covent Garden, 

326. 
Saintsbury, Prof., 171, 175. 
Sanchoniathon, 44. 
Savage, Richard, 122. 
Saxe, Maurice de, 64. 
Scharf, Sir George, 329. 
Scott, Samuel, 134, 179, 

182. 
Scott, Sir Walter, 266. 
Scribleriady Cambridge's, 

184-188. 
Scrub, 16, 27. 
Scudery, 84, 313. 
Select Fables, Bewick's, 48. 
Select Society, Edinburgh, 

1 60. 
Shakespeare Tavern, 336. 



She Stoops to Conquer, Gold- 
smith's, 47. 
Shepherd, Fleetwood, 229,' 

234- 
Sheridan, R. B., i, 6, 83, 345. 

Shurland, Sir Robert de, 

144. 
Siddons, Mrs., 20, 21, 22. 
Siege de Calais, Belloy's, 58. 
Sleep Walker, luzdy Craven's, 

217. 
Sloane, Sir Hans, 31, 45. 
Smibert, John, 154. 
Smith, Adam, i6o. 
Smith, J. T., 26. 
Smollett, Dr., 54. 
Solimena, Francesco, 154. 
Solomon, Prior's, 255, 256, 

316. 
Songes and Sonnets,Snrxey^s, 

43- ^ 
Sorbieres, M. Samuel de, 52, 

53, 55- 
Southampton Street, 346. 
Spleen, Colman's, 9. 
Spleen, Green's, 142. 
Sprat, Bishop, 52. 
Standish, Anne, 117, 121. 
Steinman, G. Steinman, 271. 
Sterne, Laurence, 56, 90, 

129. 
Stevens, George Alexander, 

65, 90. 
Stothard, Thomas, 91. 



General Index. 



361 



Stowe, 78. 

Strange, Sir Robert, 71, 327, 

345- 
Strawberry Hill, 78. 

Strawberry Hilly Description 
of, Walpole's, 216, 217. 

Strawberry Hill Press, 205- 
221. 

Strickland, Mrs., 21. 

Stultifera Navis, Brandt's, 

39- 
Suffolk, Lady,' 178. 
Suspicious Husband, Hoad- 

ly's, 12, 20, 21. 
Sullen, Mrs., 15. 
Swift, Jonathan, 106, 107, 

110, V-Z- 
Swinburne, Mr. A. C, 267. 



Tavistock Row, 325, 343. 
Taylor, John, 19, 21. 
Teague's Ramble, Gent's, 
125. 

Temple, Lord, 62, 73, 78. 
Tewrdannckh, Pfintzing's, 

39- 
Thackeray, W. M., 163, 226, 

227. 
Theophrastus, 281. 
Thompson, John, 289. 
Thornhill, John, 134. 
Thornhill, Sir James, 333, 

334- 



Thornton, Bonnell, 194. 

Thorpe, Thomas, 105. 

Thos. Gent, Printer, 104- 
132. 

Thrale, Mrs., 69. 

Thurston, John, 289, 290. 

Tom Folio, Addison's, 281. 

Tom's Coffee House, 339. 

Tonson, Jacob, 120. 

Tothall, William, 134. 

Tour of Covent Gar- 
den, The, 323-345. 

Train-bearers, Pages as, 
68. 

Travels, Maundevile's, 43. 

Tristram Shandy, 57, 86, 89, 

313- 
Tug, Tom, 26. 



Vandervelde the younger, 

344- 
Vanloo, Michael, 58. 
Vauxhall, 65, 
Vergy, Treyssac de, 58. 
Vertue, George, 212, 223. 
Vertues and Vices, Hall's, 

280. 
Virgil, the Spira, 39. 
Voltaire, 17, 319. 
Voyage Round the World, 

Shelvocke's, 44. 
Voyage to Russia, Justice's, 

90. 



362 



General Index. 



Walmsley, Edward, 289. 

Walpole, Horace, 12, 34, 37, 
57, 62, 78, III, 156, 160, 
178, 179, 180, i8t, 190, 
191, 192, 194, 198, 319, 
321. 

Waterman, Dibdin's, 26. 

Warburton, Bishop, 342. 

Watts's Charity at Roches- 
ter, 138. 

Watts, John, 120. 

Welsh, Mr. Charles, 38. 

West, James, iii, 329. 

West, Richard, 180. 

Weston, Thomas, 10, 11, 16, 
27. 

Wharton, Thomas, 207. 

Wheatley, Mr. H. B., 221. 

Whirler, Jack, 9. 

White, Henry, 289. 

White, John, 113, 118. 

Whitefield, G., 57. 

Whitefield, Mrs., 182. 

Whitehead, William, 184, 
185, 195. 

Whitehead, Paul, 178, 179. 

Wilkes, John, 57. 

Wilks, Robert, 327. 



Williams, Sir Charles Han- 
bury, 192. 

Wills's Coffee House, 340. 

Wilson, Bishop Thomas, 
119. 

Wilson, Richard, 334. 

Wilton, Joseph, 71. 

Wonder, Centlivre's, 24, 26. 

Woodward, Dr., 42. 

World, Dodsley's, 179, 191. 

Wright, Joseph, of Derby, 
70. 

Wyat, Thomas (the elder), 
216. 



Yates, Mrs. 4. 

York Journal, Gent*s, 128. 

York, History of, Gent's, 

128. 
York Press, Davies', 128. 
Younge, Miss, 4, 7, 24. 



Zara, Voltaire's, 7, 9, 

27. 
Zincke, 345. 
Zoffany, 70, 334. 



